Climate outlook improves with fewer coal plants

Led by cutbacks in China and India, construction of new coal-fired power plants is falling worldwide, improving chances climate goals can be met despite earlier pessimism, environmental groups said.

A joint report by the groups CoalSwarm, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace follows a warning this week by two international agencies that the world needs to shift quickly away from fossil fuels to curb global warming. Environmentalists were dismayed by President Donald Trump’s US government budget proposal last week that would cut spending on renewable energy.

Construction starts for coal-fired plants in China and India were down by 62 percent in January from a year earlier while new facilities starting operations declined 29 percent, according to the report. It said older plants in the United States and Europe are being retired at a record pace.

The latest developments “appear to have brought global climate goals within feasible reach, raising the prospect that the worst levels of climate change might be avoided,” said the report.

It acknowledged “the margin for error is tight.” Sustained progress will require China and India to scrap more than 100 coal plants on which construction has been suspended. And the report warned that some countries, including South Korea and Indonesia, are failing to develop renewables, which could increase their need for coal power.

In a separate report, the US-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said falling power demand in Japan means most of the 45 new coal plants the country has planned will likely never be built.

Shift

The reports mark a shift in sentiment from six months ago, when environmentalists warned governments were doing too little to carry out the Paris climate accord. Signed by 170 countries, it calls for holding global temperature increases to no more than two degrees centigrade (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in hopes of preventing sea level rise and other drastic change.

China, the biggest greenhouse gas emitter, said then that its coal use would rise until 2030. But later data showed the peak passed in 2013 and consumption is falling.

Countries including China, Germany, India and Japan are moving away from coal as alternatives get cheaper, said Tim Buckley, the IEEFA’s director of energy finance studies. “I don’t think Trump can stop that,” he said. Despite such changes, the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose to a new high last year and is increasing, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Asia alone is expected to account for 70 to 80 percent of the global growth in coal-fired power capacity over the next two decades.

Industry experts cautioned that countries including India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam need to keep adding coal power because it is the only affordable option in a region where 500 million people lack access to electricity. The cost of solar and wind have fallen by up to 80 percent in some markets, but in places such as Bangladesh or parts of China it can still be double that of coal. /