McKenna counters U.S. coal initiative

OTTAWA — A U.S. effort to stoke the fires of coal-powered electricity didn’t escape the attention of Canada’s environment minister Monday as Catherine McKenna used her Twitter account to troll the carbon-based fuel just as American officials were praising its virtues.

McKenna is in Bonn, Germany, for the 2017 United Nations climate change talks, where the rules for implementing the 2015 Paris accord are being hammered out — and where she and British counterpart Claire Perry hope to persuade the world to abandon coal-fired power.

By contrast, the United States — with President Donald Trump at its helm — has promised to “end the war on coal.”

Having declared his intention to pull the U.S. out of the Paris accord, Trump dispatched George David Banks, his special assistant on energy and the environment, to Bonn to host an event promoting coal, natural gas and nuclear energy, as well as technology that can reduce their impact on the environment.

The International Energy Agency forecasts global demand for coal and natural gas will not diminish over the next 25 years, Banks said Monday. Coal already produces two-fifths of the world energy supply, and another 1,600 coal plants are in the works right now.

By 2040, Southeast Asia will get half its power from coal plants, Banks said.

While he was making his case, McKenna was on her Twitter account, extolling the virtues of alternatives to coal in a series of tweets that stood in sharp contrast to the U.S. position.

“Burning coal responsible for 41 per cent of our global emissions,” McKenna tweeted. “The largest single source worldwide. Phasing out coal represents a massive opportunity and #ClimateAction.”

Coal, she continued, is “the most powerful fossil fuel in the world. We must all work together to get off fuel and transition to cleaner forms of energy.”