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With coal the largest single cause of climate change, can new technologies offer any future for the coal industry in Wales?

Here in Wales there is a strong cultural and emotional attachment to coal. Welsh industry was built on it, and much of our Welsh culture is the product of the strong communities the industry spawned.

While some have welcomed the demise of an industry that caused so much ill-health, death, pollution and social deprivation, a number of influential voices are proclaiming that King Coal has a glowing future, claiming coal can now be burned ‘cleanly’.

This is, for now, a false promise. Gains in efficiency have been relatively small, and burning more coal would only push our emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) to ever-more dangerous levels.

Coal is the largest single cause of climate change. Half the CO2 humans have ever emitted is from burning this dirtiest of fossil fuels. It is also the main reason why Britain has emitted more CO2 per head of population than any other country.

Any future for coal hinges on our ability to capture and store underground the CO2 it emits. But this carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is not likely to be commercially available until around 2020. Until then, we cannot even be considering new coal-fired power stations, and, instead, should be making all possible efforts to reduce our dependence on this prime source of carbon dioxide.

Does this mean there is no place for Welsh coal until CCS is a commercial reality? More than 70% of the coal used in the UK today is imported. If Welsh coal replaced some of these imports it could provide a temporary lifeline to the coal industry and would save the carbon cost of transporting millions of tonnes from Russia and South Africa.

The risk, though, is that Welsh coal output and imports would both increase on the promise of CCS in the future. This would be disastrous. Coal use has to be drastically reduced everywhere if we are to stand a chance of overcoming the immense threat of climate change.

The strongest opposition to the use of coal is coming from some of the world’s leading climate scientists. One of the most respected, Professor James Hansen of NASA, wrote recently that ‘coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and life on this planet’. Coal-fired power stations are, he said, ‘factories of death’.

The Western Mail last September carried similar comments by Welshman Sir John Houghton. Sir John, formerly head of the UK Met Office and senior scientist with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said: “We should put a block on coal leaving Wales to go into new coal-fired power stations unless they’ve got carbon capture.”

These scientists have good reason to be alarmed. Evidence is showing that climate change is happening much sooner and with greater intensity than was predicted, and that we have little time left to avoid catastrophic consequences.

An important customer for Welsh coal is the Aberthaw power station. Along with the Port Talbot steel works, Aberthaw is the single largest emitter of CO2 in Wales. Its emissions in 2006 rose to more than seven million tonnes, a figure that could rise to 10 million tonnes in the future.

The company that operates Aberthaw, RWE npower, has recently been given the go-ahead to build a large liquid natural gas (LNG) power station at Pembroke. This was opposed by both Friends of the Earth Cymru and the Countryside Council of Wales, because it will dump large quantities of waste warm water into the environmentally important Milford Haven waterway. The heat wasted by this power station would heat 350,000 homes.

This provides an indication of how energy wasteful we still are, despite the frightening predictions of climate change and growing concerns about energy security. If our political leaders were serious about these issues they would insist that the LNG is only burned in combined heat and power (CHP) stations, so the waste heat is usefully used.

CHP is not rocket science – it is common practice in many other countries. In fact, in the late 1990s, the present Government’s policy – designed to protect the coal industry – was to allow only CHP gas-fired power stations.

CHP is just one example of the technologies available that can help us meet our energy needs and reduce our climate-changing impacts by burning less coal. It is these technologies that we must support and develop, to drive the ‘green economy’ revolution – a revolution that world leaders are now recognising as central in overcoming the twin threats of economic recession and climate change.

While the finger of blame is often pointed in the direction of China and India as they expand their economies in order to raise millions out of abject poverty, we have to accept responsibility for the leading role that we have taken in fuelling climate change. Wales still ranks 13th in the international league of worst emitters per person, while research has shown that a third of China’s emissions are caused by the manufacture of goods to other countries. As we have cut manufacturing output in the UK we have exported our emissions to China.

As political inaction slides us closer to devastating climate change, more people are turning their backs on the political system and taking up direct action. Their main target, as protests at Ffos-y-fran, Aberthaw, Kingsnorth and the UK Coal Authority’s meeting in Cardiff have all shown, is coal. The future for King Coal may not burn so brightly after all. 

(Gordon James is director of Friends of the Earth Cymru)

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