WCA: Climate Week acknowledge role of all low-emission technologies

With Climate Week a key occasion to focus on ways to reduce carbon emissions, the World Coal Association (WCA) has called on participants of Climate Week to recognise the role of all low-emission technologies to help cut global CO2 emissions.

"Climate Week brings to the surface the important issue of lack of policy parity and investment in all low-emission technologies, including high-efficiency low-emission (HELE) coal technologies and carbon capture and storage (CCS)," said Benjamin Sporton, WCA Chief Executive.

He continued: "The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that demand for coal will grow by 33% by 2040. Coal is crucial in securing affordable energy to hundreds of millions of people in developing and emerging economies who currently lack access to energy. The only effective approach to meeting growing energy demand and reducing global emissions is to increase support for HELE coal plants and CCS technologies."

Sporton emphasised that without using all available options for reducing emissions – including low-emission coal technologies, energy demands will not be met, energy poverty cannot be overcome and global emissions will not be reduced.

Sporton also pointed out that the WCA has been working towards aiding the deployment of efficient power plant technology when coal plants are constructed with the launch of a global Platform for Accelerating Coal Efficiency (PACE). The purpose of PACE is to increase the global average efficiency of coal-fired power plants and in turn decrease CO2 emissions, while continuing legitimate economic development and poverty alleviation efforts.

CCS technology has been successfully implemented ¬at SaskPower’s Boundary Dam coal-fired power plant in Canada. This CCS project reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 1 million tpa of CO2 – the equivalent to removing over 250 000 cars off the road each year.

Sporton highlighted: “As the IEA emphasises, CCS technology is vital to achieving global climate ambitions. However, according to the IEA while US$2 trillion has been invested in renewable projects only 1% of this has been invested in CCS.”

Edited from press release by Harleigh Hobbs

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcoal.com/coal/23092015/wca-climate-week-acknowledge-role-of-all-low-emission-technologies-2891/