EURACOAL has held a conference in Brussels with representatives from the European Commission and the International Energy Agency (IEA) over global coal consumption and its effects on the climate. A steadily rising coal consumption rate will fuel a third of the world’s power by 2030, according to the IEA, and has provoked concern over resulting CO₂ levels. The agency predicts that Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology would make a significant dent on our resulting CO₂ emissions and make coal a more enviromentally viable fuel – without dulling the edge of EU competitiveness.

Coal remains indispensible for the EU’s security of energy supply and it will make a substantial contribution to reducing CO₂ emissions until 2020 if the basic conditions to renew the power station portfolio are positive, explained the President of the European Association for Coal and Lignite (EURACOAL), Petr Pudil. In Pudil’s opinion, coal’s significance for climate protection will further increase after 2020, when it should be possible to deploy Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) industrially and to establish a European transport and storage infrastructure. EURACOAL’s President pointed out that there is currently no source of energy that only has advantages. With natural gas, in the long‐term, there is a price risk and Pudil warned against the hype concerning so‐called unconventional gas. With nuclear energy, the disposal question is still unclear. Wind and sun are expensive and generation can be intermittent.

Pudil recalled that coal utilisation in Europe had to be considered not only in environmental and climate terms. Coal currently represents almost 80% of EU energy reserves. Mineable reserves are spread over a large number of EU Member States. The European coal mining industry is the basis of a whole chain of industrial added value, nowadays securing about 280,000 jobs. Including trade and power stations the European coal industry is an important economic and social factor in the EU, stressed EURACOAL’s President.

In Pudil’s opinion the EU’s one‐sided role as pioneer in international climate protection has no future. In order to maintain its competitiveness, Europe’s industries need a level playing field also and precisely for climate protection. Reduction obligations in the context of the European Emissions Trading Scheme, extending beyond the objective agreed for 2020, would strangulate European coal utilisation and would have fatal effects on security of energy supply and economic development.

The Director of Energy Markets and Security of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Didier Houssin, confirmed the important and increasing role of coal for world power supply. World coal consumption is currently increasing on average by 5% every year. According to IEA forecasts, coal will cover more than one third of world power demand by 2030 – in order to compensate for the resulting rise of CO₂ emissions, CCS technology is indispensible in Houssin’s opinion. According to IEA calculations, the global deployment of CCS technology for 3,000 plants could save approximately 9 Bt/y CO₂. CCS would then cover about one fifth of the reduction necessary by 2050. Houssin explained that world‐wide 7 CCS plants already exist, a further 70 are being planned. Houssin stressed that CCS should not be limited to coal‐fired power stations, but that it would also become an important technology for gas‐fired power stations as well as all carbon‐intensive industries.

Philip Lowe, Director-General of DG ENERGY, explained that “CCS is coal’s ticket to the future”. The EU had acknowledged this and acted accordingly. CCS is included in the Framework Programme for Research. The European Commission welcomes and promotes the construction of demonstration plants and has made available as an incentive for investment up to 300 million free emission certificates for CCS plants. The EU supports the construction of a European CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure and its CCS Directive guarantees a uniform legal framework. Furthermore, CCS must be pushed forward in the context of worldwide international co‐operation.Within EU energy policy, coal, according to the new Director‐General, will also play a central role in the future.