Experts at the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris estimate that demand for coal will increase in the next two decades by more than for any other energy source except wind and solar power, from the current level of about 6.7 billion tons per year to almost 10 billion tons in 2030.

China and India are mainly responsible for the coal boom, with the two countries already accounting for more than half of global demand. According to the IEA, they will have more than doubled their coal consumption by 2030. Coal provides them with electricity, and electricity is the elixir for progress and prosperity. In China, a new coal power plant is placed into service about once a week.

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Source:  http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,707654,00.html

by Frank Dohmen, Alexander Jung and Wieland Wagner

Coal-fired power stations are a major producer of the greenhouse gas CO2, but there is no alternative to the fuel in the near future. Energy companies are hoping that carbon capture and storage technologies may be the answer, but many local residents don’t want CO2 stored under their backyards.

When Rolf Martin Schmitz, a manager with the German energy giant RWE, drove to the North Sea resort island of Sylt last summer, he immediately noticed the signs. Along the side of roads throughout the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, he was greeted by images of skulls. Residents had installed the billboards to protest against underground storage sites for carbon dioxide that may be built in the region.

Citizens fear dangerous leaks of the gas, which can be hazardous at high concentrations, and other health risks. Schmitz, on the other hand, is worried about the future of his company. (more…)

posted by Dennis Ambler

Who’s the greenest of them all? India- Hindustan Times

Indian consumers are the greenest in the world, said a global survey of 17 countries, released on a day when the Municipal Corporation of Delhi became the nation’s first civic body to cash in on cutting down carbon emissions.

A municipal compost plant in Okhla — run by the private sector ILFS group — generated a first, modest cheque of of Rs 5 lakh in carbon emission reduction (CER) credits for its plan to keep more than 9,000 tonnes of carbon over the next 10 years by stopping methane leaks from garbage.

“In an age in which American consumerism has nudged most of the developing world into aping its values, such success stories illustrate public-private partnership model is the way to go,” said Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change.

CERs, or carbon credits, are environmental currency, issued by the United Nations — after a rigorous procedure that can last two years; the Okhla plant was cleared in one — to a project that cuts carbon emissions. The credits can then be traded on international exchanges like shares.

[Ambler comment:  No doubt this garbage will be re-cycled many times.]

Source:  Wall Street Journal

The less credibility the climate body has, the less it can do to block vital economic development

By BARUN MITRA

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed support for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its leader, Rajendra Pachauri, at a local energy conference in New Delhi Friday. The move has surprised many observers, but it may prove to be politically astute.

The IPCC’s credibility is in tatters. From climategate to glaciergate, Amazongate, natural-disaster gate, and now Chinagate, the revelations of bad science keep coming. Given all that, plus the much-publicized flap between Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and Mr. Pachauri over the science behind “melting” Himalayan glaciers weeks before the Copenhagen climate summit in December, superficially one might have expected the Indian government to jettison Mr. Pachauri as soon as possible. (more…)

Source:  http://dsds.teriin.org/2010/

India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh:

I am honoured to have this opportunity to address such a prestigious gathering of government leaders, civil society activists, academics and scientists from around the world. The Delhi Sustainable Development Summit celebrates its 10^th anniversary today and with each passing year it has become an increasingly important event on the international environment and climate change calendar.

The Energy Research Institute, TERI, has, under the able and far-sighted leadership of Dr. R.K. Pachauri, earned welldeserved respect and international acclaim for its contributions to the global effort in meeting the twin challenges of energy security and climate change. (more…)

From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in Copenhagen

The mountains shall labor, and what will be born? A stupid little mouse. Thanks to hundreds of thousands of US citizens who contacted their elected representatives to protest about the unelected, communistic world government with near-infinite powers of taxation, regulation and intervention that was proposed in early drafts of the Copenhagen Treaty, there is no Copenhagen Treaty. There is not even a Copenhagen Agreement. There is a “Copenhagen Accord”.

The White House spinmeisters spun, and their official press release proclaimed, with more than usual fatuity, that President Obama had “salvaged” a deal at Copenhagen in bilateral talks with China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, which had established a negotiating bloc.

The plainly-declared common position of these four developing nations had been the one beacon of clarity and common sense at the foggy fortnight of posturing and gibbering in the ghastly Copenhagen conference center.

This is what the Forthright Four asked for: 

(more…)

By Christopher Monckton

At SPPI’s blog, we are happy to answer questions from time to time about the science and public policy of climate.

Dear Lord Monckton – What is your response to the view that the combination of peak oil and the unstable cauldron of the Middle East, which is now spreading to Pakistan, is so potentially dangerous as to warrant an accelerated shift to alternative, non-oil sources of energy irrespective of climate change? – An enquirer.

Dear Enquirer, – First and foremost, one should not take public-policy decisions for reasons that are not founded in truth. Those who have (as we now know) fabricated the case for anthropogenic “global warming” have now lost the argument with the general public, notwithstanding the funding ratio of 50,000:1 in favour of alarmists. So they have a number of fall-back positions: ocean acidification (even more nonsensical than “global warming”), and the position you are inviting me to comment upon.

I should be delighted if I could be confident that our present leaders were doing as China is doing: quietly and competently going around the world securing exclusive access to valuable natural resources, while we focus on shutting down our economies and inflicting upon ourselves, selectively, the highest tax increase in human history – cap and tax – in the specious name of Saving The Planet.

China has recently secured exclusive rights over the largest iron-ore deposits in the world, in Gabon. Using nothing more than a rickety, rented drilling-rig and considerable negotiating skill, she has found a trillion barrels of oil in northern Iraq and has secured exclusive rights both from the Kurdish local administration and from the Baghdad government.

And what do we do? Ban oil-drilling off the US coast on specious environmental grounds, compelling those who want to find indigenous oil to take it from tar sands – a messy business. Also on specious environmental grounds, it has proven impossible to build a simple gas-pipeline from the North Slope of Alaska to an ice-free port such as Anchorage, so that enough natural gas to supply the whole of Western Europe is flared off daily.

Furthermore, the sour, sullen refusal of the environmental movement to countenance development of badly-needed fossil-fueled and nuclear-fueled power stations in the US and elsewhere is leading to the gradual collapse of heavy industries in the West, so that manufacturing that might have been done here, where regulation is sensible and effective, is transferred to places like China and India, where the pollution emissions per unit of production are many times higher than in the West, with the consequent loss of income and jobs. The sheer stupidity of this policy is self-evident.

Until the environmental movement disentangles itself from the international marxist Left, it will continue to resist sensible resource development. I am uneasy, therefore, at your suggestion that we should pursue the economically-destructive, climatically-irrelevant, scientifically-illiterate, mathematically-innumerate policies advocated by lavishly-funded, self-serving pressure groups closely in league with today’s worldwide governing class.

When and if the price of oil or coal or gas rises high enough to warrant the development of alternative fuels, the market will take care of the problem. The history of State intervention to try to pick future winners shows that only a lunatic would expect to succeed by going down that route.