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Coal not 'good for humanity': Report
A new report from NGO Oxfam has challenged mining industry spin about coal and poverty, showing that coal is not a suitable solution to improve energy access in developing countries
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new report from NGO Oxfam has challenged mining industry spin about coal and poverty, showing that coal is not a suitable solution to improve energy access in developing countries.
The report, entitled 'Powering Up Against Poverty', also found that the Australian government's love affair with coal risked putting the country out of step with the rest of the world. This would also harm the world's economic future, given that renewable energy is likely to be the leading source of electricity worldwide before 2030.
Oxfam Australia's climate change policy advisor and report author Simon Bradshaw said that contrary to the aggressive rhetoric of the coal industry, coal was proven unsuitable to meet the needs of most people in the developing world living without electricity.
'Four out of five people without electricity live in rural areas that are often not connected to a centralized energy grid, so local, renewable energy solutions offer a much more affordable, practical and healthy solution than coal,' Bradshaw said on Wednesday.
He said the Australian coal industry, faced with the rapid decline in the value of its assets and an accelerating global transition to renewable energy, had been falsely promoting coal as the main solution for increasing energy access and reducing poverty around the world.
'But as well as failing to improve energy access for the world's poorest people, burning coal contributes to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year due to air pollution and is the single biggest contributor to climate change, pushing people around the world deeper into poverty,' said Bradshaw.
He said Oxfam was seeing the world's poorest people made even more vulnerable through the increasing risk of droughts, floods, hunger and disease due to climate change.
'Australia must rapidly phase out coal from its own energy supply and, as a wealthy developed country, do far more to support developing countries with their own renewable energy plans,' said Bradshaw.
Oxfam said its new report outlined the changing energy landscape as well as what is working for communities around the world, from solar energy in the Pacific to new ways of powering Africa, China and India.
The report also found that coal mines are displacing some of the world's poorest communities, forcing them off their land and leaving them with poor access to food and water and struggling to make a living. (ebf)(+++)
