You Are Here:
Coal fired power plants are the biggest sources of man made carbon dioxide emissions.
This makes coal energy the single greatest threat facing our climate.
|
“I can’t understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants." -- Noble Peace Prize winner Al Gore |
|
The situation is even more acute in China where more than 70 percent of energy needs are met with coal.
Apart from climate change, coal also causes irreparable damage to the environment, people’s health and communities around the world.
While the coal industry itself isn’t paying for the damage it causes, the world at large is.
Quit coal for real solutions
The world has enough technically accessible renewable energy to meet current energy demands six times over.
We need an energy revolution that substitutes wind, solar, energy efficiency and other modern technologies for dirty energy sources like coal.
Governments have in part been seduced by an illusion of “clean coal.”
The result of a major public relations offensive by the coal industry including a number of dubious “technological fixes” that they claim make burning coal safe for the climate.
The CCS con
One of these Carbon, Capture and Storage (CCS) is a plan to capture carbon emissions from power stations and bury them underground.
The technology won’t be ready for at least another 20 years, too late to save the climate. Yet the vague promises of CCS are being used to justify building new coal-fired plants.
These plants will spew out enormous amounts of carbon dioxide pollution for at least the next 20 years and probably during their whole 40-year lifetime. In short, any new coal fired power plant will contribute massively to the climate crisis.
The world doesn’t need more coal, it needs an Energy [R]evolution.
You might also like to read our study on China's coal industry (pdf), The True Cost of Coal (the first report of its kind in China).
Click here for our Energy [R]evolution report on China.
