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 nvironmental
and economic trends have made a global phaseout of coal both
necessary and feasible, reports a new article by the Worldwatch
Institute. Although coal was dubbed "The Bridge to the Future"
as recently as the 1980s, its use has actually declined during
the 1990s, experiencing a 2.1 percent drop in 1998.
 "Coal's
share of world energy, which peaked at 62 percent in 1910, is
down to 23 percent -- roughly where it was in 1860," notes
Worldwatch research associate Seth Dunn, author of "King
Coal's Weakening Grip on Power" in the September/October
issue of World Watch Magazine. "While coal's market
price is at an historic low, its environmental and health costs
have never been higher."
Hastening
coal's decline is imperative if climate change is to be slowed
in the next century, said Dunn. Coal is the most carbon-intensive
fossil fuel, releasing 29 percent more carbon per unit of energy
than oil and 80 percent more than natural gas. It accounts for
43 percent of annual global carbon emissions -- approximately
2.7 billion tons. Coal is also the most abundant of the fossil
fuels, with an estimated 1,000-year reserve. But burning the
entire resource would release 3 trillion tons of carbon into
the atmosphere, five times above the safe limit identified by
scientists for averting serious climatic disruptions.
Two main ingredients
of coal smoke are particulate and sulfur dioxide pollution, which
cause 500,000 premature deaths and millions of new respiratory
illnesses each year in urban areas worldwide. Several cities,
including Beijing and Delhi, are near the pollution levels that
London experienced during its famous "fog" that took
4,000 lives in 1952. Today's fogs are transcontinental travelers:
dust clouds from Asian coal now reach the US West Coast. In rural
areas, coal smoke from cooking accounts for as many as 1.8 million
deaths globally.
Piecemeal
attempts to deal with coal's health and environmental effects
have created new, more chronic problems. Higher smokestacks,
built to lessen coal's local air pollution, have led to widespread
acid rain and deposition. Acid rain legislation initially focused
on reducing emissions of sulfur, but declining sulfur levels
have in many places been offset by nitrogen emissions. Primarily
because of nitrogen overload, hundreds of European lakes remain
acid-stressed, and half the US Adirondacks' lakes and ponds are
projected to become unable to support life by 2040. Meanwhile,
acid hazes cover the Indian Ocean, reduce wheat yields in India,
and cause $14 billion annually in damages in China. Acid rain
legislation has had other unintended environmental consequences,
including a hunt for low-sulfur coal which has resulted in massive
strip mining near World Heritage Sites in Canada, mountaintop
removal in West Virginia, and the uprooting of indigenous peoples
from Australia to Arizona.
"It's
time to move beyond this piecemeal approach and toward a more
comprehensive strategy to phase out coal," said Dunn. One
key to the "de-coalonization" process is reducing the
large subsidies that encourage its use in some countries. China
has more than halved its coal subsidy rates since 1984, a move
which contributed to a 5.2 percent drop in Chinese coal consumption
in 1998. Belgium, France, Japan, Spain and the United Kingdom
have collectively halved coal use since slashing or ending coal
supports over the last fifteen years. Opportunities exist for
further reductions: remaining coal subsidies total some $63 billion
annually -- $30 billion in industrial nations, $27 billion in
the former Eastern bloc, and $6 billion in China and India. In
Germany, the total is $21 billion, including direct supports
averaging more than $70,000 per miner.
The boldest
initiatives to cut back on coal are in China. The government
has introduced a tax on high-sulfur coal to encourage a switch
to the country's natural gas and renewable energy sources. In
Beijing, officials aiming to phase out coal from the city center
have banned high-sulfur coal, established 40 "coal-free
zones," and made plans to construct natural gas pipelines.
Four other Chinese cities -- Shanghai, Lanzhou, Xian, and Shenyang
-- have followed suit with plans to phase out coal.
Despite the
fuel's decline, many "colonies of coal" remain, in
rich and poor nations alike. In the industrial world, the United
States and Denmark still depend on coal for 53 and 74 percent
of electricity, respectively. South Africa and China are the
most coal-reliant developing countries, with respective 78 and
73 percent shares of coal in overall energy use. Globally, thirteen
countries continue to depend on coal for at least one-quarter
of their total energy.
For a coal
phaseout to succeed, a fair transition for affected workers will
need to be managed. Already, coal miners number just 10 million
worldwide -- less than one-third of one percent of the global
work force. These jobs are disappearing quickly, as cost-cutting
practices lower prices but also slash employment. In 1924, US
coal mines employed 705,000 miners; today, they employ less than
82,000. Only 13,000 union coal miners remain in the United Kingdom,
down from 1.2 million in 1978. China has lost 870,000 coal jobs
over the last five years and the government plans to close down
25,800 coal mines this year. To minimize the dislocation for
workers, governments in both China and the United Kingdom are
locating solar cell manufacturing sites near abandoned coal mines.
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