The Stakes Could Not Be Higher. Everything Hinges on Stopping Coal

COMMENT: George Monbiot is a writer of urgency. But this essay may be one of his most urgent yet. His thesis: burning coal for electricity generation in a business-as-usual world either stops, or the apocalypse is upon us. "I no longer care whether or not the answer is nuclear."

Coal's panacea is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), but Monbiot calls it "alchemical dust," and says a House of Commons environmental audit committee examined the proposition that carbon prices will rise sufficiently to pay for CCS - "and found that it was nonsense."

Politicians are in the pockets of industry, says Monbiot, and "won’t stand up to business, even when the future prospects of mankind are at stake. If fear is the only thing that moves them, we must present them with a greater threat than the companies planning new coal plants. We must show that this issue has become a political flashpoint; that the public revulsion towards new coal could help to eject them from office. You could do no better than joining us at Kingsnorth [site of a new coal-fired plant] this week."

[More about Kingsnorth here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2008/aug/01/kingsnorthclimatecamp.activists]

Here in British Columbia, nobody is building a new coal-fired plant. We're so virtuous, we don't have anything to blockade, like Monbiot has Kingsnorth. Sure.

BC continues to purchase a lot of electricity generated from coal. I haven't been very sympathetic to arguments that we should stop doing that, because it is so much cheaper than the renewable alternative. But I get the point. In 2004, Powerex, BC Hydro's energy trading subsidiary, contracted for all the power from a new coal-fired generation plant in Hardin, Montana. As far as I know, we're still doing that. BC energy policy wouldn't allow that plant to operate in BC. Gee, that's so California of us. Or it was.

The BC climate action initiatives are focussed on the 66 megatonnes (MT) of greenhouse gases we produce every year in the province. But the carbon tax doesn't apply if you buy your jet fuel or Bunker C here in BC, but burn it over the Prairies or the Pacific. Now here's the big deception, or if you think that's too strong a word, here's the big avoidance of responsibility:

Natural gas - BC produces and exports a lot of natural gas, about 1.1 trillion cubic feet per year. When that is all burned, and it is almost all burned, some in BC, mostly in the US, it produces almost as much greenhouse gas as that 66 MT that the government has its/our eyes on.

Coal - BC produces and exports a lot of coal, about 27 million tonnes of it each year. When that is all burned, and it is all burned, virtually all of it beyond BC's borders, it produces almost as much greenhouse gas again.

So, the government has us looking at just one-third of our global contribution to global warming. We shouldn't be talking about 66 MT, we should be talking about 200 MT.

(Oh, gosh. We haven't even talked about the import economy, where all of the plastic widgets we buy in WalmartHomeDepotCanadianTireCostcoFutureShopSuperstoreRona are shipped in from Asia, with a carbon footprint that even Premier Campbell's Pacific Gateway project would blush about.)

Let me see if I can rescue this from an aimless rant and bring it back to a point. Monbiot is out on a protest blockade at Kingsnorth. He says this may be the bottom line that will terrify politicians to do the right thing. We have no Kingsnorth. But we have Deltaport, which is half coal exports, and half container imports. We have the TeckCominco acquisition of Fording last week, and the statement that there's 100 years of continuing coal production in the asset. We have Harding, WestPac LNG, Kitimat LNG, and the provincial government raking in billions in unprecedented sales of gas rights in northeast BC. It's business-as-usual happening all around us. I fear we're distracted, arguing about the carbon tax and cap'n'trade. Angels. Head of pin...

Arthur

The Stakes Could Not Be Higher. Everything Hinges on Stopping Coal

Everything now hinges on stopping coal. Whether we prevent runaway climate change largely depends on whether we keep using the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel. Unless we either leave it - or the carbon dioxide it produces - in the ground, human development will start spiralling backwards. The more coal is burnt, the smaller are our chances of future comfort and prosperity. The industrial revolution has gone into reverse.

It is not because of polar bears that I will be joining the climate camp outside the coal plant at Kingsnorth. It is not because of butterflies or frogs or penguins or rainforests, much as I love them all. It is because everything I have fought for and that all campaigners for social justice have ever fought for - food, clean water, shelter, security - is jeopardised by climate change. Those who claim to identify a conflict between environmentalism and humanitarianism have either failed to read the science or have refused to understand it.

Our government could lead the world in one of two directions. Roughly one third of our power stations will come to the end of their lives by 2020. It could replace them with low-carbon plants or it could repeat - this time in full knowledge of the consequences - the disastrous decisions of the past. E.ON’s application to build a new coal-burning power station at Kingsnorth is the first for many years. At least five other such proposals hang on the outcome. Between them they would account for 54 million tonnes of carbon emissions a year: as much as the entire economy would produce if the UK, in line with current science, were to cut its emissions by 90%.

The government seems determined to make the wrong decision. It has inherited the party’s traditional love for coal, but, being New Labour, now supports the bosses instead of the workers, and has colluded with them to make the case for a new generation of power stations. It has one justification for this policy: that one day dirty coal will be transformed into clean coal by means of carbon capture and storage (CCS). All that is needed to effect this transformation is a sprinkling of alchemical dust, in the form of the future price of carbon. The market, it claims, will automatically ensure that coal plants bury their carbon dioxide, as this will be cheaper than buying pollution permits.

Last month the House of Commons environmental audit committee examined this proposition and found that it was nonsense. It cited studies by the UK Energy Research Centre and Climate Change Capital which estimate that capturing carbon from existing coal plants will cost €90-155 (£71-£122) per tonne of CO2. Yet the government predicts that the likely price of carbon between 2013 to 2020 will be around €39 (£31) per tonne. Even E.ON believes that it won’t rise above €50. “The gap between the carbon price and the cost of CCS,” the committee finds, “is enormous.” The energy minister, Malcolm Wicks, confessed to MPs: “I hope that the strengthening of carbon markets … will bring forward a sufficiently good price for carbon that it will provide some of the financial incentive for CCS. Will it be enough? I do not know.”

This is the sum of government policy: to cross its fingers and hope the market delivers. If it approves a new coal plant at Kingsnorth, it will do so on the grounds that the power station will be “CCS-ready”. CCS-ready seems to mean nothing more than this: that there is enough space on the site for a carbon capture plant, should the developer deign one day to build it. The committee warns that this meaningless promise could be used “as a fig leaf to give unabated coal-fired power stations an appearance of environmental acceptability”.

The government has already shown us what it wants to do. In January, Gary Mohammed, a civil servant at the Department for Business, emailed E.ON to ask whether he should include CCS as a condition for approving its new coal plant. (This gives a fascinating insight into how government works: companies are asked to write their own rules.) E.ON replied that the government “has no right to withhold approval for a conventional plant”. Six minutes later Mohammed answered thus: “Thanks. I won’t include. Hope to get the set of draft conditions out today or tomorrow.”

There is a simple means by which the government could ensure that our future electricity supplies would not commit the UK to stoking runaway climate change. It would do as California has done and set, by a certain date, a maximum level for carbon pollution per megawatt-hour of electricity production. This would have to be a low one: perhaps 80kg of CO2. Then, in line with the government’s precious principles (or absence thereof), it could leave the rest to the market. I have now reached the point at which I no longer care whether or not the answer is nuclear. Let it happen - as long as its total emissions are taken into account, we know exactly how and where the waste is to be buried, how much this will cost and who will pay, and there is a legal guarantee that no civil nuclear materials will be used by the military. We can no longer afford any rigid principle but one: that the harm done to people living now and in the future must be minimised by the most effective means, whatever they might be.

But I believe the likely response would be more interesting than this. Several recent studies have shown how, through maximising the diversity of renewable generators and by spreading them as far apart as possible, by using new techniques for balancing demand with supply and clever schemes for storing energy, between 80% and 100% of our electricity could be produced by renewables, without any loss in the reliability of power supplies. Unlike CCS, wind, wave, tidal, solar, hydro and geothermal power are proven technologies. Unlike nuclear power, they can be safely decommissioned as soon as they become redundant.

A policy like this requires both courage and vision. So look at the current cabinet - Brown, Straw, Darling, Hutton, Blears, Kelly, Hoon - and weep. Every man and woman with backbone was purged from this government years ago, leaving those who know how to appease the interests that might threaten them. These people won’t stand up to business, even when the future prospects of mankind are at stake.

If fear is the only thing that moves them, we must present them with a greater threat than the companies planning new coal plants. We must show that this issue has become a political flashpoint; that the public revulsion towards new coal could help to eject them from office. You could do no better than joining us at Kingsnorth this week.

monbiot.com

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