Third World Fossil Fuel Pollution Prompts Worries

The West’s efforts to cut pollution and check global warming could be torpedoed by a sharp rise in coal burning in the developing world, energy researchers say.

Rapid industrialization in the Third World is being fuelled by ever-increasing amounts of natural gas, oil and--above all--coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel but also the most abundant.

Industry statistics indicate that world coal reserves will last more than 200 years at present rates of consumption, but scientists are more concerned about the life expectancy of the planet itself if fossil fuel pollution continues unchecked.

Some believe that in as little as 50 years Earth’s climate could be permanently and disastrously thrown off balance by pollution from fossil fuel burning.

“Coal continues to be the worst offender from an environmental point of view,” U.N. Environment Program director Jacqueline Aloisi de Larderel told a recent coal conference in London.

“While precise estimates are difficult to calculate, carbon dioxide emissions could exceed 10 billion tons per year by 2020, based on current emission rates. Coal burning could account for over four billion tons per year.”

The effects of pollution on that scale on the world’s climate are likely to be dramatic, she said.

Rich farming areas could turn to desert, freak storms could lash coasts and sea levels could rise to inundate entire nations, making up to 50 million people homeless and creating a new class of “environmental refugees,” she said.

Coal’s poor environmental reputation is based on the fact that it gives off 25% more carbon dioxide pollution than oil per unit of energy produced and also produces sulfur dioxide--the cause of acid rain, which kills trees and decays buildings.

Coal mines also leak significant quantities of methane gas into the atmosphere. Methane is a “greenhouse gas” 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Mick Kelly, a senior research associate at Britain’s University of East Anglia, believes the world is at a threshold in its use of fossil fuels.

If present trends in fossil fuel consumption, the use of chlorofluorocarbons and deforestation continue, the world’s temperature will rise by as much as 8 to 10 degrees by 2030, he said.

This would trigger a climatic upheaval similar to the one which ended the Ice Age--but in decades rather than millennia.

China, the world’s leading coal producer and consumer, expects to increase its energy use ninefold by 2030, according to Aloisi de Larderel.

“The levels of coal use predicted for India and China could have a very dramatic environmental impact indeed,” Jan Vernon, head of the environment group at IEA Coal Research, an offshoot of the International Energy Agency, told Reuters.

A ninefold increase in Chinese coal burning would double world coal consumption and increase the contribution to global warming by 25%.

“If developing countries keep to the sort of forecasts for coal consumption now being bandied about, they would negate any effort by Western nations to control emissions of greenhouse gases.”

The technology to virtually cut out “greenhouse gases” such as sulfur dioxide emissions already exists but it costs money.

The IEA--the West’s energy watchdog--emphasizes that coal does not have to be a dirty fuel if existing clean-burn technologies and pollution control devices like scrubbers are fitted.

“The IEA view is that coal can be burned cleanly and efficiently,” an official at the Paris-based agency told Reuters. “There’s no reason from our point of view why coal shouldn’t be used as a baseload fuel for power generation.”

And not all Third World coal burning is dirty, he said. “Where plants are built with Western money, especially if they are designed and operated with Western expertise, they will have clean coal technology,” he explained.

While the United States, the world’s No. 2 coal consumer and producer, is pumping funds into research on “clean coal technologies,” the world’s other leading producers--China, the Soviet Union, Poland and India--lack the funds needed for such research.

“We have had visits from Chinese delegations and their basic philosophy is: ‘We would love to have clean coal technologies but it’s a question of cost,”’ Vernon said.

“While some of the clean burn technologies are in their interest because they use the coal more efficiently, I can’t see them starting to put scrubbers on their coal-fired plants (to cut sulfur dioxide emissions) because it’s a non-productive extra cost,” she added.

And no clean coal technology can cut out carbon dioxide emissions--the biggest contributor to the “greenhouse effect.”

And not everyone shares the view that the Third World poses the greatest threat to the world’s climate.

Simon Roberts, energy campaigner at British pressure group Friends of the Earth, dismissed concern about a rise in pollution in the developing world as a “total red herring.”

“It’s the industrialized world that has got us into the mess that is global warming and, therefore, they’ve got to get us out of it,” he told Reuters.

“Third World nations are not going to sacrifice their own development to the arrogant First World argument that they should stay where they are.

“After all, if China did increase its energy use per capita ninefold, that would only bring them near the present level of North America.”