The United Nations' climate chief urged the coal industry on Monday to "change rapidly and dramatically" at a coal summit on the sidelines of global climate talks.
The United Nations' climate chief urged the coal industry on Monday to
"change rapidly and dramatically" at a coal summit on the sidelines
of global climate talks.
Speaking as environmental protesters clamored outside, the U.N.'s Christiana
Figueres said that the cheap but plentiful fossil fuel came with a hefty--and
now intolerable--price.
"While society has benefited from coal-fuelled development, we now know
there is an unacceptably high cost to human and environmental health," she
said.
"I am here to say that coal must change rapidly and dramatically for
everyone's sake."
Figueres is in
Warsaw
for
the annual round of negotiations under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate
Change.
The talks, running until Friday, seek a way to a new, global deal by 2015 on
curbing climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions.
The International Energy Agency says coal accounted for 44% of carbon dioxide
emissions in 2011, the largest share, and remains the leading source of
electricity and heat generation.
Activists and some delegates were angered by
Poland
's
"endorsement" of the two-day coal summit.
The host body, the World Coal Association, went on the defensive on Monday.
"This is not an attempt to distract from the important work of these
(climate) negotiations," WCA chief executive Milton Catelin told
delegates.
The industry "accepts" that the burning of coal contributes to
warming and that new technology is needed, he said, referring to CO2 capture
and other initiatives.
But, Catelin argued, "the facts tell us that continued economic growth and
poverty reduction ... will both require coal."
About 41% of global electricity and 68% of steel production depended on coal,
Catelin said.
The coal summit brings together some of the world's biggest coal producers and
consumers, policymakers, academics and NGOs to discuss the role of coal in the
global economy and in the context of climate change, according to the WCA
website.
It is being held at the Ministry of Economy, a few kilometers from the National
Stadium hosting the climate talks.
Outside the ministry, Greenpeace activists hoisted huge anti-coal banners
reading: "Who rules
Poland
? Coal
industry or the people?"
Others wore face masks, standing next to a pair of huge, plastic inflated lungs
to highlight the health consequences of coal pollution.
Police used a fire engine crane to remove some protesters dangling from the
building's facade from climbing cables.
Opening the meeting, Economy Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Janusz
Piechocinski insisted that
Poland
had
"with great consistency stuck to its international obligations to
climate."
But, he said, "The largest coal deposits in the EU are in
Poland
, so
over the next decade coal will remain an important fuel and can be a guarantor
of energy for the entire EU."
According to the IEA,
Poland
was
the world's ninth-biggest coal producer in 2012 and the 10th biggest producer
of electricity from coal and peat.
A number of non-government organizations had urged Figueres to withdraw from
addressing the coal summit.
But she stressed on Monday that her attendance was "neither a tacit
approval of coal use, nor a call for the immediate disappearance of coal".
"The coal industry faces a business continuation risk that you can no
longer afford to ignore," she said.
"By now it should be abundantly clear that further capital expenditures on
coal can go ahead only if they are compatible with the 2.0 degree Celsius
limit," she said, referring to the warming maximum sought by U.N. members.
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