At a contentious coal summit on the sidelines of global climate talks the United Nations climate chief has urged the coal industry to “change rapidly and dramatically”.
Speaking as green protestors clamoured outside, the UN’s Christiana Figueres said that the cheap but plentiful fossil fuel came with a hefty, and now intolerable, price.
Her comments could be particularly telling for countries such as Australia, which has so far built much of its recent financial strength on exports such as coal.
“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.”
The French newsagency AFP reports Ms Figueres is in Warsaw for the annual round of negotiations under the UN Framework Convention Climate Change (UNFCCC) known as the Conference of Parties (COP19).
The talks, running until on Friday, are seeking a way to a new, global deal by 2015 on curbing climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) says coal accounted for 44 per cent of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2011, the largest share, and remains the leading source of electricity and heat generation.
AFP reports activists and some delegates were angered by Poland’s “endorsement” of the two day coal summit.
The host body, the World Coal Association (WCA), went on the defensive.
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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.
However, Mr Catelin argued, “the facts tell us that continued economic growth and poverty reduction will both require coal.”
About 41 per cent of global electricity and 68 per cent of steel production depended on coal, Mr Catelin said.
AFP reports the 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, just a few kilometres 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?”
Protesters on the roof waved the national flags of Canada, the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, Brazil and the European Union (EU).
Others wore facemasks, standing next to a pair of huge, plastic inflated lungs to highlight the health consequences of coal pollution.
Police used a giant fire engine crane to remove some protesters dangling from the building’s facade from climbing cables.
Opening the meeting, Poland’s Economy Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Janusz Piechocinski insisted that Poland had “with great consistency stuck to its international obligations to climate.”
AFP reports 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 organisations had urged Ms Figueres to withdraw from addressing the coal summit.
However, she stressed 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 UN members.
