Chronic. After two weeks of tough negotiations at the 26e conference on the climate in Glasgow, China and India succeeded, Saturday, November 13, to attenuate the wording of the passage of the final text relating to coal. The climate agreement only commits to a “reduction” and not an “exit” from this fossil fuel. Much of the battle against climate change is in Asia, which consumes and produces three quarters of the world’s coal. It supplies half of the electricity production in China and even 70% in India. Almost all of the world’s coal-fired power plant construction projects – nine out of ten – are in Asia. In general, the continent is seeing its energy consumption explode due to sustained population growth and rapid economic development. It also recorded the largest increase in wind and solar power generation capacity in the world in the past five years.
Two options
To reduce its coal consumption, Asia has only two options: stop the construction of new power plants, and limit greenhouse gas emissions in the existing fleet by using carbon capture technologies including effectiveness remains to be proven. On November 3, in Glasgow, the Asian Development Bank came up with a third solution. It wishes to experiment with a financing mechanism combining public and private funds to buy the existing plants in the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, and thus shorten their operating life in order to replace them with renewable energies.
Several NGOs warn, however, against the perverse effects of such a mechanism. First, the operators of the power stations could be tempted to extend their life expectancy in the hope of making a better profit from it when reselling; others could even be encouraged to build new ones since they have the assurance of reselling them quickly.
Fossil energy supports millions of inhabitants and contributes to the budgetary revenues of Asian states
Will this initiative reduce Asia’s dependence on coal? Not so sure, because the power stations alone do not explain this addiction. Fossil energy is at the heart of an ecosystem that supports millions of inhabitants and contributes to the budgetary revenues of States. In India, 300,000 jobs depend on mining, and nearly four million people live from it indirectly. Hundreds of small rural factories – often brickyards or steel mills – need it to function. The railways get half of their freight revenues from its transport alone, a windfall that helps subsidize passenger transport. Proof that coal has not yet become cursed in the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched in 2020 an auction program of several mining operations, called Unleashing Coal (ie, in French “liberating coal”).
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