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Old King Coal at COP28: Uninvited Guest or Star of the Show?
By Tilak Doshi & Peter A. Coclanis
December 19, 2023
Last Friday, just two days after the Dubai COP28 meeting ended, a report published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated that global coal demand will set another new record this year. Although coal use in the West is falling, demand in developing economies “remains very strong, increasing by 8% in India and by 5% in China in 2023 due to rising demand for electricity and weak hydropower output.”
Perhaps the best preamble to COP28 was delivered by India’s Power Minister, R. K. Singh. On November 6th, he stated “There is going to be pressure on nations at COP-28 to reduce coal usage. We are not going to do this... we are not going to compromise on availability of power for our growth, even if it requires that we add coal-based capacity”. India plans an additional 30 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fueled power generating capacity in addition to the existing 50 GW and plants already under construction. It is also set to increase coal production by 60% by 2030, from its current level of 1 billion tons, to ensure ample supply for its thermal power plants.
This insistence on affordable coal-based power for economic growth is not unique to India. Other large developing countries such as China, Indonesia, South Africa and Vietnam all have similar plans to ramp up coal power
plant construction despite policy “promises” to curtail fossil fuels made at UN climate forums since the “Paris Agreement” of 2015. Despite the “net zero by 2050” mantra ceaselessly trumpeted in the Western legacy media, the insistence by the developed countries that poorer countries reduce their “carbon footprint” to “save the planet” is bound to be disappointed.
Economic planners in developing countries are under an existential compulsion to improve the standards of living of their citizens. To believe that poorer countries will forego fossil fuels requisite to their hopes of a more prosperous future because “we are all in this together” can only be described as fantastical.
King Coal in History
No country ever has reached “developed country” status without relying on fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas). Modern economic growth, commencing in the late eighteenth century and “picking up steam,” as it were, in the centuries thereafter, drastically improved material well-being the world over. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, coal rapidly emerged as the source of human flourishing like never seen before in human history. Coal greatly improved productivity in transport and manufacturing, which proved crucial to raising income and living standards over increasing swaths of the world. Per capita GDP in the U.S. rose 20-fold over the past two centuries to 2018 and 14-fold globally, in lock step with the increased use of coal followed by oil and natural gas.
Coal transformed economic life first in northwest Europe, then in the U.S., and later in other parts of the world. In the U.S., between 1870 and 1920, during the country’s will to power, as it were, coal production grew 16-fold. By the 1880s it had become the leading source of energy in the country and remained so until the middle of the twentieth century when it was superseded by oil. By 1900, the U.S. had also become the richest and most powerful country in the world. Even in 2022, after a century and a half of
intense mining, the U.S. remains the world’s 4th largest producer of coal. The U.S. also retains the largest coal reserves in the world.
Quite simply, we are still in the age of fossil fuels, including coal. They currently provide over 80% of world consumption of primary energy, with most of the rest accounted by nuclear energy and hydropower. This is despite the trillions of dollars spent on subsidizing “renewable energy”, primarily wind and solar power, in Europe and the U.S. Coal still provides over a quarter of global primary energy consumption; it accounts for almost half (47%) of Asia’s energy supply. In contrast, wind and solar provided less than 5% of the world's primary energy supply last year.
The Global South Opts for Coal
The demonization of fossils fuels in general, and coal in particular, by environmental groups and organized lobbies of the climate-industrial complex has been an established feature of past COP conferences. Threats of an impending global environmental catastrophe allegedly caused by fossil fuel emissions dominate the legacy media. To avoid climate Armageddon, the IEA asserts that an immediate and drastic reduction in the use of fossil fuels is necessary.
The “High Ambition Coalition”, an informal 15-nation bloc within the UN primarily consisting of EU countries and the UK, is campaigning for a global commitment to phase out new coal production. The group has already published a statement demanding the “urgent phase out of coalfired power generation” ahead of the COP28 climate summit. Just prior to the Dubai COP28, France, backed by the U.S., announced its plan to seek an agreement to halt all private financing for coal-based power plants during the UN climate conference.
Developing nations are having none of it, increasingly pushing back against the West’s radical anti-fossil fuels campaign. The divide between an
evangelizing West and leading developing countries, especially in Asia, which heavily depend on coal for affordable power and energy security, played a disruptive role in the Dubai summit.
Coal is a dense energy source, and it is cheap, versatile and readily transportable. To illustrate coal’s energy density, a Tesla battery that weighs over 500kg and takes 25-50 tons (i.e. thousand kgs) of minerals to be mined, processed, and transported, can store the same energy as a mere 30kg sack of coal. Unlike oil and natural gas, it is considered a “nonpolitical” fuel given that it is the world’s most abundant energy resource. Coal deposits are spread widely, if unevenly, around the world. Its biggest exporters, in rank, are Indonesia, Australia, Russia, the U.S., Colombia, and Canada. China and India, the world’s two largest consumers of coal and among its largest producers, depend heavily on it for their energy, and hence national security.
Coal is vilified for being the dirtiest of fossil fuel. But coal-based power generation is to the contrary a success story of scientific progress. Key pollutants from coal combustion in power generation plants have fallen dramatically with technological improvements over the past several decades with the development of high-efficiency, low-emission plants. These have reduced emissions of pollutants that adversely affect human health, including carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide (by 98%), oxides of nitrogen (83%), ground-level ozone and particulate matter (99.8%). Carbon dioxide, contrary to common perception, is not a pollutant.
India has come out clearly with its pro-coal stance as we have seen. Last week, South African officials confirmed that the country will miss its 2030 carbon emissions targets under the Paris climate agreement, as the country plans to run eight coal-fired power plants for longer than planned as a matter of necessity. This is so despite the approval a $1 billion loan for South Africa by the World Bank last month to help it address an energy crisis that peaked this year with the country’s worst electricity blackouts.
Likewise, Indonesia will continue to build new coal power plants despite earlier blandishments of a $20 billion financial package by a group of rich countries to help the country wean itself off its coal dependence. In October, it emerged that Vietnam, despite its Paris Agreement “commitment” of carbon emission reductions, may double the amount of coal-fired electric generation capacity by 2030 under a draft power development plan submitted to the prime minister for approval.
China, the world's coal heavyweight, continues its building spree of coal power plants with over 50 GW of new capacity just in the first half of this year. It permitted two new coal power plants per week in 2022 and has six times more coal-fired power plants under construction currently than the rest of the world combined.
Germany, the world’s leader in green energy ambitions, provides the best lesson in abject irony. When faced with the prospect of entering the winter of 2022-2023 without sufficient energy supplies (after having shut its nuclear power plants and losing its access to piped Russian natural gas by invoking sanctions against Russia which was followed by the sabotage of the Nordstream pipeline), the country retreated to coal power generation. According to a Twitter (now called “X”) thread by Doomberg, Germany’s has moved back to coal “with the speed and efficiency of the British evacuation of Dunkirk.” According to the IEA, Germany’s “significant reversal” drove European coal consumption for power up 9% in 2022.
Much maligned coal continues to support human flourishing. Its use in developing countries will continue to grow in the decades to come. Meanwhile, we will see just how “temporary” is Germany’s existential move back to coal this winter. Old King Coal was the elephant in every COP28 meeting room and conference hall.
Tilak Doshi is a London-based energy economist and Forbes contributor.
Peter A. Coclanis is Albert R. Newsome Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Global Research Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.