Nearly $1 trillion (£700bn) is being invested in new coal-fired power plants worldwide despite the fact that the demand for electricity generated from coal has declined for two years in a row, shows a new report released today.

The report, by Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and CoalSwarm, warns that this problem of overbuilding is creating an “increasingly severe capacity bubble”.

Last year the global power sector added at least 84 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity. This is a 25 percent increase from 2014.

As the report explains, across the world a generating capacity equal to 1,500 coal plants is either in construction or in various stages of planning. The amount of capital potentially wasted on these plants comes to US$981 billion.

Yet, the average coal plant is running fewer and fewer hours each year.

In China for example, the consumption of coal for electricity generation dropped 3.6 percent last year. Currently, the average Chinese coal plant runs less than half the time – the lowest level since 1969 – and the government recently announced plans to halt new coal plant approvals.

And in India, 11GW of thermal capacity is lying idle. Last year saw the first drop in India’s annual coal power installations since 2006 and the report expects this the drop “to be even more pronounced” in 2016.

“The era of Big Coal is clearly coming to an end,” said Nicole Ghio, senior campaigner for the Sierra Club’s International Climate and Energy campaign. “Coal use keeps falling off a cliff and plants are sitting idle, yet more money is being wasted on misguided attempts at locking in this dirty, dangerous fuel.”

Lauri Myllyvirta, senior global campaigner on Coal and Air Pollution at Greenpeace, described the situation as a “last-ditch push” by an industry which is becoming “rapidly uncompetitive”.

But while coal plant retirements may be growing globally, led by efforts in Europe and the US, this is not happening fast enough to balance out the overbuilding.

As the report warns, the danger of all this potential capacity sitting idle is that, in the end, it might be used but with significant impact on the world’s ability to meet its climate targets under the Paris Agreement.

“Even with no further building of coal plants, emissions from current coal plants will still be 150 percent higher than what is consistent with scenarios limiting warming to 2°C,” it explains, “meaning that most operating and new coal-fired plants will have to be phased out well before the end of their planned lifetime.”

Even building “high efficiency” coal plants is not a viable solution the report states, since this would lock in “large, long-lived carbon emitters, interfering with the need to fully decarbonize the power sector by 2040 in order to limit warming to 2°C”.

Instead, the report argues that the amount wasted on the coal capacity bubble should be direct towards alleviating energy poverty and investing in clean energy such as wind and solar power.

It notes that the nearly $1 trillion wasted is equivalent to the total level of investment needed to provide electricity to the 1.2 billion people currently lacking access to energy according to the International Energy Agency.

This would also be enough money to increase the amount of solar and wind power installed globally by 39 percent, the report finds.

“The hundreds of billions being thrown at coal could instead go toward the booming clean energy sector, helping more than a billion people get access to the clean, reliable electricity that fossil fuels have failed to deliver,” explained Ghio.

In addition to its significant climate impact, the report finds that the additional new proposed coal capacity would result in over 130,000 more premature deaths worldwide each year due to air pollution.

“The clock is ticking on the transition to clean energy,” said Ted Nace, director of CoalSwarm. “Although this research has revealed hundreds of billions being squandered on unneeded coal plants, there’s more at stake here than money.”

Photo: Tennessee Valley Authority via Flickr

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Last Tuesday the government of Ontario announced the Thunder Bay Generating Station – Ontario’s last coal-fired power plant – had burnt off its last supply of coal. The electricity of Canada’s most populous province is officially coal free.

“Today we celebrate a cleaner future for our children and grandchildren while embracing the environmental benefits that our cleaner energy sources will bring,” says Bob Chiarelli, Ontario’s 
Minister of Energy, in a press release.

The coal power plant in Thunder Bay was one of five in Ontario that a little over ten years ago produced 25 per cent of the province’s electricity. Burning coal is a particularly polluting form of generating electricity and shutting down Ontario’s five coal plants is the equivalent of pulling seven million cars off the road in terms of global warming greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Ontario is the first province or state in North America to successfully phase out the burning of coal to produce electricity. The Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development describes the move as the “single largest regulatory action in North America” to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The province’s coal phase out arrives a year ahead of schedule. Ontario Premier Ernie Eves committed in 2002 to shut down all the province’s coal power plants by 2015. Last year, the province’s current premier Kathleen Wynne introduced legislation that will ban coal from being used for electricity production in Ontario ever again. 

The Ontario Clear Air Alliance (OCAA), a Toronto-based organization that played a central role in the coal phase out welcomed Tuesday’s announcement describing it as a “great day for our province and our planet.”

David vs Goliath – Ontarians' Campaign to Shut Down Coal Plants

“When we started our campaign, people in Ontario who considered themselves to be politically astute, assumed that we didn’t have a chance to achieve a coal phase-out. And it is not surprising that they thought so. We were engaged in a David and Goliath battle,” says Jack Gibbons, director of the Ontario Clear Air Alliance.

“The majority of the people of Ontario didn’t know that Ontario had coal-fired power plants. And they certainly didn’t know that our Nanticoke Generating Station on Lake Erie was the largest coal plant in North America and Canada’s #1 air polluter,” Gibbons told DeSmog Canada. Nanticoke shut down last December.

The Ontario Clean Air Alliance formed in 1997 to push for an end to coal in the province. Currently the Alliance consists of ninety public health organizations, faith groups, unions, hydro utilities and municipalities, including the City of Toronto.

“People thought that while the OCAA might be well meaning it was engaged in a futile campaign that was sure to fail,” recalls Gibbons.

The political context in Ontario was less than ideal for a campaign against coal when the Alliance got started. Progressive Conservative leader Mike Harris was premier at that time. The ‘Harris Years’ remembered by many Ontarians as a time of severe cuts to the public sector and clashes with environmental groups. This was not the premier one would expect to bring about the end of coal in Ontario.

Surprisingly, it was Harris who legislated in 2001 the closing of the Lakeview coal power plant in Mississauga. Lakeview closed four years later becoming the first of Ontario’s five coal plants to shut down.

Game Changer – Ontario Medical Association Speaks Out Against Air Pollution

“The involvement of the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) in the air pollution issue changed everything,” Gibbons told DeSmog Canada.

On May 12th, 1998, the president of the OMA, an organization representing the province’s doctors, announced “air pollution is a public health crisis” in Ontario. Two years later the Association released a study showing air pollution killed 1,900 Ontarians per year and cost the economy $10 billion annually.

“While the politicians could ignore the environmentalists when they said that smog kills, they couldn’t ignore Ontario’s doctors. And neither the politicians nor OPG (Ontario Power Generation) dared to challenge the doctors when they said that air pollution is a public health crisis in Ontario. As a result, the politicians had to find a solution to this crisis,” says Gibbons from Toronto.

The Thunder Bay coal power plant will be converted to biomass in order to keep producing electricity and has retained sixty jobs in the process. According to the province of Ontario, a combination of nuclear, biomass, natural gas, waterpower, wind and solar power have made up for the power coal once produced. All are far less polluting than coal-fired electrical generation.

Is a Phase Out of Nuclear Power Next? 

As for the Ontario Clear Air Alliance, one campaign has ended and a new campaign has already begun. The Alliance’s focus now is to phase out nuclear power in Ontario, possibly a far more difficult task given over half of Ontario’s electricity comes from nuclear and the province’s two biggest political parties – Liberals and Progressive Conservatives – support nuclear power.

Gibbons believes by using a similar strategy that the Alliance’s used for its coal campaign they will succeed in phasing out nuclear. The pillars of the organization’s success with coal, according to Gibbons, was having a clear message, good solution, and credible messenger, addressing an important political issue, and building a strong base of public support.

“That in a nutshell is how we achieved the coal phase-out,” Gibbons told DeSmog Canada.

The Ontario Clear Air Alliance’s goal is for Ontario to run on one hundred per cent renewable energy by 2030.

Image Credit: coal power plant by Wigwam Jones via Flickr

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