Coal

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Europe and Asia are massively expanding?

I’ve been looking into the coal industry, in a superficial way. And here’s the scoop. The coal industry is dead and dying, in the U.S. and elsewhere — if not right now, then pretty soon. Scientific American in May trumpeted the news: “The End of Coal Burning in the U.S.” The Wall Street Journal noted: “The Coal Age Nears its End.” And then there’s Canada’s in-house peakster: “Is Peak Coal Coming?” asks economist/author Jeff Rubin.

So there you have it, except that’s only the half of it. The other half is this: “Coal Era Beckons for Europe,” says BusinessWeek. Bloomberg reports that “Merkel’s Green Shift Forces Germany to Burn More Coal.” Another report, citing the World Resources Institute, said 1,231 new coal plants with total power capacity of 1.4 million megawatts are planned worldwide.

“Beyond the biggest users — China, India and the United States,” reports ClimateWire, “the assessment finds a heavy coal demand building in Russia, Vietnam, Turkey and South Africa. The United States, with 79 coal plants in the pipeline, ranks fourth in this category.”

These two contradictory views of coal cannot long coexist, and a gambler might be well advised to put his money on a coming coal boom. The idea that coal is dying seems to be mostly wishful thinking on the part of green activists, as well as some politicians and regulators in the United States and parts of Canada. Ontario aims to end dirty coal-fired power generation, at great cost to consumers who are now paying high prices for the putative clean alternatives, wind and solar.

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A proposed Arctic coal-mining project that was rejected by a Nunavut development regulator in 2010 but has been revived by another Canadian company has triggered renewed concern about the potential impact on wildlife, Inuit hunting grounds and world-renowned fossil sites on Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg islands.
 
Linking the rebirth of the planned coal dig on Canada’s northernmost landmasses with recent federal cuts to Arctic environmental monitoring, Green Party leader Elizabeth May said: “Is it a coincidence that one of the most polluting resource-extraction industries is now ready to exploit the area?”
 
The Arctic-coal controversy has re-emerged at a time when scientists across Canada are sounding alarms about the potential impact of budget cuts to Canadian environmental research and ecosystem monitoring capacity. On Tuesday, hundreds of scientists attending a conference in Ottawa, along with allied environmental advocates, are scheduled to take part in a mock funeral march to Parliament Hill — a so-called “Death of Evidence” protest.

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The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Coal has had a good run in the past five years – sweeping up the energy equivalent of the Academy Awards for best foreign film in four of them. (Though shot principally in China, these epic productions mostly starred American or Australian actors.) Notwithstanding its bad-boy reputation as a despoiler of the heavens and the Earth, coal has emerged as the fastest growing of all fossil fuel. It works hard (especially when pulverized into powder and burned super-hot). It’s relatively cheap.

And it has substantially cleaned up its environmental act. Honest. Energy expert Robert Bryce says, for example, that the cleanest U.S. coal-fired electricity plants now exceed all traditional Environmental Protection Agency pollution standards. Combine these advantages and you have blockbuster box office.

BP’s annual statistical review reports that global coal production increased 6 per cent last year, twice the celebrated rate of increase in global natural gas production. This most notorious of fuels now accounts for 30 per cent of global energy consumption – the highest percentage since 1969. It will almost certainly account for more in the years ahead. It is, after all, one of the cheapest primary sources of energy in the world. And its reserves are, for all practical purposes, inexhaustible.

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The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Three years ago, Jeff Rubin left Bay Street to publish a book that warned that the world was on the brink of a period of deglobalization because of the rising cost of energy. Now, as he argues in his forthcoming book, The End of Growth, sustained high oil prices mean that advanced economies are gearing down into a new era of slow – or no – economic growth.
 
While most economists believe that zero growth means big trouble, Mr. Rubin says it does not have to be a disaster – because consumers in the developed world can learn to live with less, even in energy-hungry Canada. The former CIBC World Markets chief economist cites research to show that some of the happiest people on Earth live in slow-growth economies. Lofty oil prices will do more than any regulations to curb greenhouse gas emissions and slow urban sprawl. The transition to slower growth spells tough, near-term changes in the economy – but in the long run, the environment and its citizens might be better for it.

Just what does this new world look like, and what will it take to adjust? Some surprising answers lie an ocean away, in Denmark.
 
The first thing I noticed on a flight into Copenhagen a few summers ago was a ring of wind turbines surrounding the city. Not far from the city’s harbor, the sweeping arc of offshore windmills is a hard sight to miss.

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