Standing Up to the Coal Killers
By Duggan Flanakin
October 30, 2024 - Back in April the Group of Seven (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) agreed on a time frame for phasing out coal-fired power plants in the first half of the 2030s. There was just one problem: Only the U.S. and Germany are among the world’s top ten coal consumers.
The G7 virtue signaling came in the wake of the United Nations’ COP28 climate summit in December 2023 and a UN warning that “excuses” for failing to take bold action on climate change were “not acceptable.”
What ought to be “not acceptable” is the fact that, except for a few Caribbean islands, European nations already have the world’s highest electricity costs.
The UN counts as members both China and India, which together consume nearly 70% of the world’s coal production. Neither is a member of the G7. Nor does the “bold” G7 commitment explain how their self-imposed coal ban – which they want to impose on poor African nations – even matters.
FutureCoal (formerly the World Coal Association) CEO Michelle Manook mused that the G7 official communique was “unclear in which they seek to achieve,” since “many of the G7 countries do not rely on coal for baseload electricity,” while Germany and Japan “have publicly stated that they still need coal to keep the lights on.”
Manook’s organization says that, instead of bashing coal, world leaders must embrace a balanced, pragmatic, and responsible approach to energy policy. German finance minister Christian Lindner in late 2023 dismissed the government’s aim to phase out coal by 2030. Without coal, admitted Lindner, the nation’s power grid will likely face serious problems.
By contrast, Japan, which operates the world’s most efficient coal power fleet, had avoided setting any firm date for ending its reliance on coal – even as it cautiously restarts its nuclear energy industry over a decade after the Fukushima disaster.
The EU’s spurious commitment to abandoning coal was made as climate activists burned photos of G7 leaders whose nations were falling far short of Net Zero targets that are artificial numbers created with little regard for short-term human well-being or of the hardships of energy poverty.
EU nations are still recovering from an energy inflation rate that exceeded 40% in June 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Many households and businesses are still struggling with the cost of energy. None of that mattered to the well-heeled, naive green activists.
In another virtue signal, the EU nations in May unanimously agreed to leave the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), an international agreement that protects energy investments. The 1998 treaty allows firms and investors to sue governments whose anti-energy policies hurt profits. The right to challenge government policies, however, covers investments in hydropower, solar, wind, and other clean energy sources as well as fossil fuels.
The ECT, signed by 50 nations after the fall of the Soviet Union, protects European energy firms with fossil fuel assets in former Soviet states against risks to their investments and trade, such as having their assets seized or contracts breached. Signatories include nations in Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
Once again, the coal killers prefer cutting off their noses to save face the moment the Greta Thunberg brigades storm the barricades. But how can industry trust nations that spuriously abrogate contracts?
Meanwhile, in the United States, the government that believes throwing money at a problem just announced $428 million in Department of Energy grants for 14 federal-linked projects in 15 U.S. “coal communities” to advance the domestic manufacturing of “clean energy” products.
These heavily subsidized projects are said to possibly leverage over $500 million in private sector investment into small- and medium-sized manufacturers and create over 1,900 jobs in communities with decommissioned coal facilities. The projects are intended to address five key supply chains – grid components, batteries, low-carbon materials, clean power generation, and energy efficiency products.
The largest subsidy, $87 million, goes to Mainspring Energy Inc. in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, to build a manufacturing facility to produce 1,000 linear generators that can run on any gaseous fuel. The DOE press release assures us that at least 80% of the 291 construction-related jobs will “seek to be unionized,” and that the facility will create “600 operations positions.”
FutureCoal’s Manook was speaking up for the world’s poor in saying that, “The world needs wider apolitical leadership beyond the G7 to engage the Global South in investing in all technology solutions, including abated coal, to lower global emissions. If the G7 or other forums choose to weigh in on these debates, then they must adopt a pragmatic, responsible fuel and technology-agnostic position supporting all nations’ sovereign rights.”
Manook went further, stating that, “These forums should recognize FutureCoal’s Sustainable Coal Stewardship roadmap, which showcases the existing abatement and commercial opportunities that enable the entire coal value chain to mitigate emissions.” Known technologies, she added, can abate up to 99% of coal emissions during combustion.
One of those nations is South Africa, where about 90,000 people work in coal mining and thousands more work at coal-fired power plants. Multiple South African communities and local municipalities depend on the coal economy – just as many Americans and British did until their governments began to wage war on the world’s oldest high-energy fuel.
Even anti-coal Bloomberg admits that labor unions and communities in eastern South Africa, which supplies almost all the nation’s electricity and coal, are not happy with the Europe-influenced government decision to promote labor-killing wind and solar energy projects on the other side of the country.
South Africans are aware that access to electricity is fundamental to fulfilling basic social needs, driving economic growth, and fueling human development – it is the pathway out of poverty toward prosperity. Areas without high-quality electricity are home to over 8 million South Africans, and a 2020 study showed a direct correlation between income levels and electricity access.
The study concluded that “efficient and effective financing and investment climate alone are not enough to warrant energy security, but right policies, good governance, and institutional quality are necessary to ensure that the entire nation has adequate access to electricity.
Shuttering coal mines and closing coal-fired power plants in a nation – let alone an entire continent – woefully short of “sustainability” in electricity access is at worst the new face of a colonialist superiority complex, at best merely a panicked response to local political pressures.
As Afrobarometer’s Abel Oyuke put it, “Access to electricity is fundamental to opportunity in this age. It's the light that children study by; the energy that allows an idea to be transformed into a real business. It's the lifeline for families to meet their most basic needs. And it's the connection that's needed to plug Africa into the grid of the global economy. You've got to have power.”
Nigeria’s Dr. Justice ‘Mine Derefaka agrees that achieving universal access to energy in Africa is “paramount.” While South Africa’s coal extension may seem counterintuitive to some, he adds, “it is a necessary hedge to maintain stability and ensure a responsible, just transition that leaves no one behind.”
Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues.