The World Coal Association published its latest report in May Coal – Energy for Sustainable Development. The title is immediately intriguing because, as coal is one of the heaviest carbon emitters, it appears a tall order simply to get the words ‘coal’ and ‘sustainable’ into the same sentence in a positive context.

The report does so by focusing on poverty rather than climate change, emphasising the role that energy plays in economic development. It highlights the examples of China and South Africa, noting that the former has achieved an electrification rate of over 99% and the latter over 75%, both exceptional achievements.

The report comments “it cannot be ignored that both have benefited from ease of access to large reserves of coal”.

There is no question that access to energy is one of the defining features of development and that wider access has a huge impact on a population’s health and wealth in a wide variety of ways, from cleaner cooking fuels to the ability to do homework after dark. There is also no question that the easy availability of coal has allowed hugely increased access to energy in both South Africa and China and, moreover, at a reasonable economic cost.

Economic development would almost certainly have been slower in these countries had coal not been exploited. However, the point here is not that the world needs coal, but that the world needs energy, and in a world that counts carbon as well as dollars, coal may not be the cheapest energy source available in the long run.

The report says that the energy poverty challenge is immense and it is. The International Energy Agency estimates that in 2035 there will still be one billion people without access to electricity and 2.7 billion without access to clean cooking fuels. That level of energy poverty is so widespread, and so without likelihood of significant improvement is genuinely appalling.

These forecasts serve to highlight a thick seam of hypocrisy amongst politicians that call for action on climate change. They are willing to focus on future potential disaster that affects rich nations as well as poor, but largely ignore the suffering that affects poor nations alone today. While the WCA does not use these terms, its call for a rebalancing of energy policy priorities is, for this reason, legitimate, even if it is also self-interested.

Can the coal industry position itself on the moral high ground in this manner? Does it matter that China’s stupendous expansion of its coal industry has been achieved under state-directed communism (presumably not the WCA’s political economy of choice), while South Africa’s capitalist model exports millions of tons of coal a year while its population suffers electricity shortages at home?

The availability of coal may make economic development easier, but it is government policy that is the defining factor in poverty alleviation and electrification. A lack of access to energy doesn’t make the case for coal; it makes the case for better governance and different spending priorities.

Source: platts.com