By Chris Lang
For the first time, fossil fuels have been mentioned in a text coming out of a UNFCCC meeting. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its first report in 1990. 31 years later, the UNFCCC has at last mentioned the main driver of climate change.
Since that first IPCC report, the world has emitted more greenhouse gas emissions than in the entire period up to 1990. And emissions are accelerating.
Unfortunately, the text that came out of COP26 is not a step in the right direction, as many have claimed.
Coal and COP26
Here’s the paragraph from the COP26 cover decision that mentions fossil fuels (I’ve highlighted the relevant text in bold):
The Conference of the Parties . . . Calls upon Parties to accelerate the development, deployment and dissemination of technologies, and the adoption of policies, to transition towards low-emission energy systems, including by rapidly scaling up the deployment of clean power generation and energy efficiency measures, including accelerating efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, while providing targeted support to the poorest and most vulnerable in line with national circumstances and recognizing the need for support towards a just transition;
This post will look at the implications of use of the word “coal” in the text. Of course we need to stop burning coal in order to address the climate crisis, but why did the discussions in Glasgow focus on coal, but not on oil and gas?
Alok Sharma’s crocodile tears
Governments are to accelerate “efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power” according to the final COP26 cover decision. Earlier versions of the text used the words “phase out” of coal. The change from “phase out” to “phasedown” caused quite a kerfuffle at the end of the COP26 negotiations.
Alok Sharma, the President of COP26, looked like he was going to cry when he announced the COP26 text. Sharma was quick to point the blame: “China and India will have to explain themselves and what they did to the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world,” he told the BBC.
But Sharma also has some explaining to do. He has received donations from Dr Ravi Kumar Mehrotra, the executive chairman of Foresight Group International, a UK-based firm with investments in offshore and onshore oil drilling.
In May 2021, the International Energy Agency put out a report titled “Net Zero by 2050”. When the report was released, Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director told the Guardian:
“If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now – from this year.”
Sharma welcomed the report, and added that it, “shares many of the priorities we have set as the incoming COP Presidency – that we must act now to scale up clean technologies in all sectors and phase out both coal power and polluting vehicles in the coming decade”.
In the UK, the fossil fuel industry currently has plans for 37 oil and gas projects and three new coal mines. In addition, the UK recently pledged US$1.15 billion in export finance to support an offshore liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique.
The myth of “clean coal”
The Glasgow text gives no deadline for phasing down coal. The word “unabated” was added to the text after the first draft. Unabated coal power means coal-fired power stations without carbon capture and storage. That leaves the myth of “clean coal” alive and kicking.
There is currently only one coal-fired power station anywhere in the world that uses carbon capture and storage: Unit #3 of the Boundary Dam Power Station in Canada. The captured CO2 is piped 66 kilometres to the Weyburn Oil Field, where it is pumped underground to extract oil.
By 2030, the Global CCS Institute anticipates just six more carbon capture and storage systems at coal-fired power plants.
And carbon capture and storage makes coal-fired power plants less efficient. Which means more coal mining, more coal transport, and more coal burned.
Why coal?
COP26, like every other COP before it, did not even get close to discussing the solution to the climate crisis: leaving fossil fuels in the ground.
Why did the COP26 cover decision, for the first time, mention just one fossil fuel? Where was the suggestion that oil and gas should be “phased out” or “phased down”? Why coal?
During the first week of COP26, more than 40 countries signed on to a “Global coal to clean power transition statement”. Once again, coal was the focus.
As Brandon Wu, Director of Policy and Campaigns at Action Aid USA, points out an excellent illustration of the reason for the focus on coal at COP26 is provided in an April 2021 report by the Stockholm Environment Institute.
The reality is that the focus on coal affects countries, like India and China, far more than it affects rich countries, like the United States.
The Stockholm Environment Institute’s report “Trends in fossil fuel extraction” includes three graphs looking at projected change in annual oil, gas, and coal production in 2030 compared to 2019:
As if to emphasise the point, during COP26 the European Commission presented a draft list of projects to MEPs that included 30 gas projects worth a total of €13 billion.
And Joe Biden’s administration is planning to hold Lease Sale 257 in the Gulf of Mexico – the largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in US history. In September 2021, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit against the sale on behalf of Healthy Gulf, Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and the Center for Biological Diversity .
UPDATE – 29 January 2022: Earthjustice won! (at least in part): “[T]he D.C. District Court invalidated the Department of Interior’s decision to offer 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas leasing, marking a pivotal victory in the fight to defend Gulf communities and the planet from the worsening climate crisis. The court held that Interior failed to accurately disclose and consider the greenhouse gas emissions that would result from the lease sale, violating a bedrock environmental law.”
In the meantime, while everyone was distracted by the use of adverbs and preposition as the new instrument to guarantee the health of the planet, all countries agreed to pass –very quietly — the operational rules for the new international carbon trading. Art. 6.4 ER credits, as the will be called, are the new reality that breaths new life (and lots of money, though not for those who will need to adapt) to the concept of ”greenwashing”. They were slipped, also very quietly, in the basic text of the Paris Agreement shorly before its signing back in 2015, and represent virtually a cut-and-paste from old and diparaged CDM text decisions of yore. If those who pushed these rules as a fundamental mechanism to save the planet are in good faith, why was this not heralded as a resounding success of COP26 at its close and for the world to know?
Why coal?
In Dr.James Hansen’s _2009_ book “Storms of My Grandchildren” (page 176) and in his paper “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where should Humanity Aim?” (Open Atmospheric Science Journal 2 (2008): 217-31 and http://www.bentham.org/open/toascj/openaccess2.htm), he states that:
“…by phasing out coal use, it is possible to keep the maximum carbon dioxide close to 400 ppm, and in a period of several decades get it back to 350 ppm and below. But why do we say that coal phaseout is the only way to do it? Could we not instead stop using oil and gas immediately, while continuing to use coal (for a while)?
No, that is not plausible, and here’s why: …How could we convince them [Russia and Middle East] to leave their oil in the ground? It is not going to happen. Besides, we would not want it to happen. We barely have time to phase in technologies for the era beyond fossil fuels, even if we begin now with an ‘all hand’s on deck’ strategy. We’re simply not ready to stop suddenly using gas and oil.
So, if we want to solve the climate problem, we must phase out coal emissions. Period.”
This phasing out of coal SHOULD have been the goal of every COP meeting since his 2009 book, and coal use would be ended by now, and we would just have a “problem” rather than the present predicament (now almost unsolvable), and would be seeing gradual lowering of CO2 levels. If “we” end coal use, then we have time do deal with all the intricate issues of new energy sources to replace oil and gas. If coal keeps being burned for any significant number of days, then we had better put the temperature probe in our goose, it is nearly cooked!
You can’t build “renewable” infrastructure without ongoing and massive fossil fuel consumption, especially oil. Nor can you maintain a military or a functioning (police) state. Nothing that happened at COP26 was a climate plan, let alone related to ecology because none of it is a degrowth plan. It’s the opposite – a plan to continue enriching the wealthy via the public’s teat, as always, and other consequences be damned. That’s what Birol and his chums at the IEA do. It’s a corporate thinktank run by economists. Anyway, we’ve hit peak oil, so over we go and down the other side towards a low energy future. Blaming China or India, as Sharma does, or Russia, as Hansen does, is ludicrous. This is *transnational* capitalism running rampant.
@francinyro – Thanks for this. I’ll take a look at carbon trading and COP26 in a future post.
Here’s CNBC on the lease sale in the USA. The emissions from the oil and gas concessions are equivalent to 130 coal-fired power plants:
Two links to read:
https://theconversation.com/cop26-heres-what-it-would-take-to-end-coal-power-worldwide-171025
https://theconversation.com/coal-why-china-and-india-arent-the-climate-villains-of-cop26-171879
Why did China and India choose coal?
From Dr. James Hansen’s speech at the Berlin Rally (13 November 2021)
“10. But the German government has taken actions that are more
consequential for young people and future generations. Germany is
attempting to have gas treated as a clean energy in financial rules of the
European Union and the United Nations. If Germany achieves this
preposterous goal for gas, young people worldwide justifiably will hold
your nation in contempt.
11. Yet this is not the first time that Germany has stood against the
future of young people. In 2001 at COP6 in Bonn, Germany used its
position as the host nation to see that nuclear power was excluded as a
clean development mechanism. This exclusion and demonization of
nuclear power contributed to the delay in development of modern
nuclear power. Thus nations with emerging economies, such as China
and India, were forced down the path of coal.
12. The German public is not to blame for this. Even the texts in schools
demonized nuclear power and failed to point out that other energy
sources were more dangerous for both human life and human health.
Modern nuclear power is safer by orders of magnitude.
13. If Germany persists and succeeds in treating gas as clean and
discouraging use of nuclear power by other nations, the eyes of history
will be unforgiving.”
(note- he’s talking about liquid-metal-cooled fast-neutron reactors that burn off the thousands of tons of present nuclear waste, not at all like the existing systems.)
The Glasgow Agreement recently put out a report titled “Drill Baby, Drill”.
The report documents “more than 800 oil and gas wells to be drilled between now and the end of 2022.” The top drilling countries are Australia, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia, USA, Norway, UK, Brazil and Myanmar. The top companies involved are ENI, Petronas, Shell, Equinor, Total, Pemex, PTTEP, BP, Pertamina, Chevron, Neptune and Exxon Mobil.
Here’s how the report ends:
The “Drill, baby,drill” story is such a sad commentary – there should be no new drilling anywhere, and that is correct, to get these projects stopped. What fools these mortals be. Meanwhile, anyone protesting a pipeline will probably end up in jail; but in a just world, anyone proposing building or operating one would go to jail. At present, police appear to be enemies of Nature.