COP28 and the coal question

Before India and China can commit to a future without coal, there are geopolitical and technological hurdles that need to be resolved

At the ongoing 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) summit in Dubai, more than 100 countries signed the Global Renewables and Energy Efficiency Pledge, aiming to triple the global installed capacity for renewables to 11,000 Gigawatts and double the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

India, which has set one of the most ambitious targets in renewable energy capacity increases globally, refrained from signing the pledge. China also balked at signing, with reports indicating the sticking point was the reference to phasing out coal and ending any fresh investments in that sector.

Coal, considered the dirtiest fuel and the biggest villain in climate change by many European nations, has been a contentious issue in earlier COPs as well. It has pitted climate negotiators of EU countries against their counterparts in India, China, and several other developing nations.

Some of the EU countries ascribe this to China and India sitting on some of the biggest reserves of coal globally. But that is a very superficial view of the issues involved. It does not occur to them that coal being phased out aggressively will not just hit developing countries; it will also impact the economies and even renewable energy journeys of European nations for several reasons.

For developing countries like India, striving to accelerate economic growth, coal remains a highly cost-efficient and practical fuel for power generation, as well as for use in industries such as steel and cement. Despite the large renewable energy capacities already built and under construction in India and China, it is simply not financially feasible to halt the establishment of new coal plants. This is especially true as both India and China depend on other countries for natural gas and petroleum, making their economies vulnerable to supply disruptions and higher costs during geopolitical strife.

When the Russia-Ukraine war commenced, even Western Europe found itself suddenly dependent on coal to an extent. The disruption in natural gas supplies from Russia — something that countries like Germany use for their power sector — forced them to reopen mothballed coal-fired power generation plants for some time. Coal demand, in fact, spiked around the world because of the Russia-Ukraine war, before it came down. What EU leaders had failed to appreciate was that disruptions in natural gas could not be easily compensated by renewable energy capacities.

Despite the exponential growth in renewable power production capacities — both solar and wind — the issue of long duration energy storage (LDES) has not been satisfactorily resolved. When the sun is shining, solar plants can produce more power than required — but unless there is a practical means to store excess energy being produced, there will be a problem once the sun goes down. The same applies to wind turbines, which depend on the wind to generate power.

There are multiple LDES options, but they are either not cheap, not efficient enough, or both. And in some cases, they are simply not practical for large-scale storage. Lithium-ion, which is the chemistry of choice in consumer electronics and electric vehicle (EV) batteries, is not suitable as an LDES option for a number of reasons, including their tendency to discharge after some time when not in use.

Storage chemistry breakthroughs hit the headlines regularly but none of them have reached a stage where they can be scaled up easily and cost-effectively to pair with renewable energy generation capacities.

A lot of hope is also pinned on green hydrogen — both for replacing coal and hydrocarbons in industries like steel and cement, as well as for other uses like transportation and even LDES. So far, though, the technology and economics of green hydrogen have still to reach the point where it becomes a mainstream fuel of choice. Even when the generation of green hydrogen happens cheaply and efficiently, building infrastructure for storage and transportation will take time.

Finally, developed countries in Europe need to realise that much of their clean energy journey and achievements have been powered, and are still being powered, by dirty fuel, mostly coal, in developing and underdeveloped nations. The price of solar panels and wind turbines dropped rapidly only because they were being made by China, which often used coal-fired plants to power these manufacturing units. Ditto for lithium processing and EV battery production, both of which China dominates currently.

Going one step further back, the lithium mines in South America and the Cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are not exactly run by renewable energy sources. If coal were to be aggressively phased out, many developed countries would see their solar panels and EV battery costs shoot up.

This is not to say that coal should be given a clean chit. It is a dirty fuel — from mining to energy production, there is nothing environmentally-friendly about it. It has to be treated as a necessary evil until practical options (and the money) to phase it out become possible. Till then, a more practical way forward is to see how its emissions can be minimised — using technology and processes such as carbon capture, utilisation and storage. And also by accelerating the increase in carbon sinks, both natural and artificial.

The writer is former editor of Business Today and Businessworld, and founder of Prosaic View, an editorial consultancy