The European Union will overshoot its Paris climate change pledges collectively by a huge margin unless its coal emissions are completely phased out within 15 years, a stress test of the industry has found.
A report by the think tank Climate Analytics finds that if Europe’s 300 coal plants run to the end of their design lifespans the EU nations will exceed their carbon budget for coal by 85%. If they want to avoid that the EU nations must stop using coal for electricity generation by 2030.
Coal use is falling by about 1% a year in Europe but still generates a quarter of the continent’s power and a fifth of its greenhouse gas emissions.
“Not only would existing coal plants exceed the EU’s emissions budget, but the 11 planned and announced plants would raise EU emissions to almost twice the levels required to keep warming to the Paris agreement’s long term temperature goal,” said Dr Michiel Schaeffer, Climate Analytics science director.
The report will feed into a review of the EU’s Paris targets next year, which could see the bloc’s planned emissions cuts raised significantly, in line with an aspirational 1.5°C goal agreed in Paris.
Coal plants will have to be shut down across the entire planet by 2050 to prevent dangerous warming, the study says. The reality though is that some key emitters will face severe problems meeting climate goals. Although China is planning to mothball its coal industry by 2040, new US president Trump has promised a coal renaissance in the USA. In Europe Germany and Poland are responsible for more than half of the EU’s coal emissions and will face the greatest challenges. Germany is postponing its coal phase-out plans until after elections later this year. Poland, which is preparing a legal challenge to the EU’s climate policy, argues that it can plant trees to offset coal emissions, and one day apply experimental carbon capture and storage technology (CCS).
The UK has Europe’s third highest capacity for coal, but has recently recommitted to a coal phase-out by 2025. However environmentalists fear that capacity payments to seven coal plants worth £453m over the next four years could undermine that deadline.
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