Benjamin Sporton, WCA Policy Director
Last night WCA hosted its official side event at the COP17 negotiations. On the panel were Nelisiwe Magubane, Director-General of the South African Energy Department who was representing Minister Dupio Peters; Jennifer Morgan, Director of the World Resource Institute’s Climate and Energy Program; and Norman Mbazima, Chief Executive of Thermal Coal at Anglo American. Norman is also Chair of the WCA’s Energy Poverty and Sustainable Development Committee. WCA Chief Executive Milton Catelin chaired the panel and contributed to the debate.
There were around 50 people in the audience, not a bad attendance for a side event starting at 8.15pm especially with the UNFCCC decision not to provide catering at this COP! Also in the audience was a contingent from the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign team in their bright yellow t-shirts.
With the event being themed as “the role of coal in the context of action on climate change and sustainable development” it was of course going to be an interesting debate. Each of the speakers took a different perspective. Norman Mbazima highlighted the world’s growing coal demand and the significant role clean coal technologies can play in addressing the world’s energy and climate challenges. Jennifer Morgan took a different view, arguing that without the deployment of CCS technology there is no future for coal, especially given the growth in renewables. Nelisiwe Magubane highlighted the important role coal continues to play in the South African economy but also addressed the need to reduce emissions through clean coal technologies and deployment of renewable energy.
Perhaps not surprisingly many in the audience didn’t see a future for coal in a carbon constrained world. There were questions about the environmental impact of coal mining, can coal really be clean, is CCS a pipe dream, shouldn’t we be investing more in renewables.
Jennifer Morgan argued that significant investment was needed to turn CCS into a reality, saying that coal can only be clean if 100% of CO2 emissions are captured. Milton Catelin highlighted that efficiency plays a key role in greenhouse gas mitigation highlighting that replacing or upgrading old, inefficient plants globally could reduce CO2 emissions by more than the intended effect of the Kyoto Protocol. Nelisiwe Magubane said coal still has a significant role to play in South Africa but that governments would be working with industry to reduce coal’s emissions profile. She also said renewables would have a significant role to play and would likely take up some of coal’s share of electricity generation in the future.
Importantly however Magubane noted that renewables needed support from base load power generation from sources like coal. She said off-grid renewable generation was not an ideal solution because it was “not right that rural people should get inferior intermittent access to electricity.” Interestingly she mentioned that some communities come to resent solar electricity because it’s not reliable.
What became clear in the discussion was that significant investment, by both the private and public sectors is needed to support the deployment of clean energy. It’s clear coal, along with CCS, along with renewables will all play a role.
Finally, one participant kindly bemoaned the UNFCCC for scheduling the event so late in the evening. He said “this is one of the most important sessions I’ve been in” because it got down to the reality of dealing with climate change in the context of the energy challenges that face the world.
In that sense I suppose the climate negotiations at these COPs are really a proxy debate for transforming energy policy. I think this side event told the story about how coal can be part of the climate solution, hopefully we made some of the “Beyond Coal” team think twice about that.
