UN Chief: Cancel All Coal Power Projects – Globally

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has again called for an end to what he called the world’s deadly addiction to coal.

In a message to the Powering Past Coal Alliance Summit, the Secretary-General said while momentum for climate action offers a measure of hope, that hope must be checked against reality. The release of Nationally Determined Contributions Synthesis report last week revealed “we have a long way to go”, indicating governments are not on track to meet the Paris Agreement goals.

The NDCs are described as being at the heart of the Paris Agreement, embodying efforts by each country that signed on to reduce their emissions and adapt to climate change impacts.

In his message, Secretary-General Guterres outlined 3 steps governments, private companies and local authorities need to take:

• Cancel all coal projects in the global pipeline.
• End international financing of coal plants and shift that investment to renewable energy projects.
• A global effort to organize a just transition, “going coal plant by coal plant if necessary” to ensure the needs of all coal communities are recognised.

“Phasing out coal from the electricity sector is the single most important step to get in line with the 1.5-degree goal,” said the Secretary-General. “This means that global coal use in electricity generation must fall by 80% below 2010 levels by 2030”.

Climate change aside, he also appeared to reference a recent report suggesting fossil fuel related air pollution causes close to 1 in 5 of all deaths globally each year.

Australia Needs To Phase Out Coal Power By 2030

Secretary-General Guterres urged OECD countries to commit to phasing out coal power by 2030, and for non-OECD countries to do so by 2040.

At this point in Australia, there are a bunch of coal-fired power stations that aren’t scheduled to close before 2030. But some of these emissions-spewing facilities will come under pressure to close earlier than anticipated for other reasons.

Three to five of the remaining fifteen coal power stations in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) will be under financial stress by 2025 according to recent analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) and Green Energy Markets. This will be due to the huge amount of renewable energy supply expected to be added to the NEM over the next few years.

“The supply added from 2018 to 2025 equates to over a third of the entire demand in the NEM, and more than 8 times the annual generation of the Liddell coal-fired power station in NSW,” said Green Energy Markets’ Tristan Edis.

CSIRO’s GenCost report released in December last year demonstrated that wind and solar power continue to be the cheapest source of energy for Australia, even taking into account additional system integration costs including energy storage and added transmission expenditure.

With the writing on the wall on the economics front as well as climate, it remains to be seen if the Morrison Government read and fully digest it, and properly support an orderly but speedy transition starting sooner rather than later.

Original Source: https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/guterres-coal-power-mb1892/