Dot Earth Blog: Coal Boom Unabated in Asia

The Green Blog news roundup included this graph and summary today:

Some 1,200 new coal-fired power plants are being planned across the globe despite concerns about greenhouse gas emissions from such generating stations, the most polluting type, the World Resources Institute estimates. Two-thirds of them would operate in China and India, it says. [World Resources Institute] [Read on...]

Two related reports have come out in recent days.

One, the United Nations Environment Program Emissions Gap Report 2012, concludes:

Action on climate change needs to be scaled up and accelerated without delay if the world is to have a running chance of keeping a global average temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius this century.

The other was a new climate assessment produced for the World Bank. Here?s the summary: ?Climate Change Report Warns of Dramatically Warmer World This Century.?

After I read it the other day, I sent this question to the bank?s press office:

I disagree with Climate Progress blogger Joe?Romm?on quite a few fronts, but he?s raised a very important point?. ?I?d greatly appreciate an answer from the?bank?on how it can put out such an urgent message on decarbonization while continuing to support coal-generated electricity (even if more efficient)?

Here?s the reply, attributed to a World Bank spokesman:

The World Bank Group only invests in coal in very rare circumstances. We have moved away from funding coal and have moved toward the funding of renewable energy. The Bank Group scaled up lending commitments for renewable energy from 22% of its energy projects in 2007 to 44% in 2012. When you talk about coal projects in the developing world, I think you need to put this in perspective. The problem with coal emissions rests squarely in the most highly industrialized nations. If you took all the developing countries in the world and added up all their emissions together, it still would be one-third of the emissions of the United States, European Union, and China combined ? just one-third. We cannot deny developing countries their basic energy needs. We invest in coal only when poor countries have no other realistic options, including no short-term options to rapidly ramp up renewable energy alternatives.

Source: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/21/coal-boom-unabated-in-asia/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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