Nasheman

India's largest selling Urdu weekly, now also in English

You are here: Home / Archives for Coal

Costa Rica is now running completely on renewable energy

by

The country doesn’t need an ounce of coal or petroleum to keep the lights on.

Water is Costa Rica's largest source of energy.(Reuters/Juan Carlos Ulate)

Water is Costa Rica’s largest source of energy.(Reuters/Juan Carlos Ulate)

by Adam Epstein, QZ

Costa Rica is running without having to burn a single fossil fuel, and it’s been doing so for 75 straight days.

Thanks to some heavy rainfall this year, Costa Rica’s hydropower plants alone are generating nearly enough electricity to power the entire country. With a boost from geothermal, solar, and wind energy sources, the country doesn’t need an ounce of coal or petroleum to keep the lights on. Of course, the country has a lot of things going in its favor. Costa Rica is a small nation, has less than 5 million people, doesn’t have much of a manufacturing industry that would require a lot of energy, and is filled with volcanoes and other topographical features that lend themselves to renewable energy.

Nonetheless, it is both a noble and significant feat for a nation of any size to eschew fossil fuels completely.

Costa Rica is not the only place in the area committed to running on green energy. Bonaire, a Dutch island territory off the coast of Venezuela, operates at nearly 100% renewable energy, and will likely reach that milestone soon with the help of an unlikely energy source: algae.

Driven by China, global spending on renewable energy is on track for its first annual gain in three years (though it might not last). Iceland already gets all of its electricity from renewable energy sources, and about 85% of all its energy is produced by geothermal and hydropower sources. And three other European countries (Sweden, Bulgaria, and Estonia) have already hit their 2020 renewable energy goals.

Denmark, which gets 40% of its energy from wind, wants to ditch fossil fuels completely by 2050. The problem with operating completely on renewable energy, as some Danes have noted, is that fossil fuels are still needed as a backup plan if, for instance, there’s a stretch of time when the country hasn’t experienced enough wind or sunshine to power everything. But the rise of renewable energy has rendered many conventional power plants unprofitable, and owners of those plants are trying to close up shop.

In Costa Rica, a drought would seriously disrupt the country’s ability to generate electricity with water. That’s probably why its government approved a $958 million geothermal project. While that’s being funded largely by Japan and the European Investment Bank, Costa Rica has already been able to spend so much on renewable energy because it doesn’t need to spend anything on defense. The country hasn’t had a military since 1948.

Millions of country's coal miners walk off job

by

India’s coal miner strike is shaping up to be the country’s largest industrial action in four decades.

Coal India is the country's second largest employer. | Photo: Reuters

Coal India is the country’s second largest employer. Photo: Reuters

by teleSUR

Millions of India’s coal miners continued to strike for a second day Wednesday against the government’s plan to allow private companies into the coal industry.

Between half and 75 percent of India’s daily coal production has been hampered by the strike, according to local media. The strike began Tuesday, after coal worker unions and the government failed to strike a deal over the entry of private firms into the market.

The state run Coal India giant has long dominated the Indian coal industry, but the neoliberal government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans to allow private firms to mine and sell coal. Coal India supplies over 80 percent of the country’s coal, and is the largest single coal producer in the world.

After India’s state run railway company, Coal India is the nation’s largest employer. Five unions representing around 3.7 million workers say allowing private firms into the industry could lead to widespread job culls at the state firm, and have accused the government of unfairly distributing mining rights.

The strike is expected to continue for another three days, unless the government can negotiate a deal with the infuriated unions. Unions are also mulling a second walkout on January 13.

The event is already being hailed as the largest strike for 40 years in India.

Last year, the world pumped out more carbon pollution than ever before

by

carbon-emission

by Brian Merchant, Motherboard

Precisely at the moment that the climate depends on carbon pollution declining, worldwide emissions continue to boom. Case in point: 2013 saw yet another record carbon high, with 35.3 billion tons of CO2 entering the atmosphere.

That’s the finding of ​the European Union’s​ Joint Research Center, which released its annual report on global emissions today. The document tallies the emissions of fossil fuel power production—coal, oil, and gas—and emissions from industry, especially cement and metal manufacturing.

The record high was reached primarily thanks to developing, coal-hungry giants: “Sharp risers include Brazil (+ 6.2 percent), India (+ 4.4 percent), China (+ 4.2 percent) and Indonesia (+2.3 percent),” the report notes.

The US—the world’s largest historic greenhouse gas emitter—grew again after a brief pause, thanks to a return to coal.

“The emissions increase in the United States in 2013 (+2.5 percent) was mainly due to a shift in power production from gas back to coal together with an increase in gas consumption due to a higher demand for space heating.”

The silver lining is that the rate of emissions growth is at least slowing: “emissions increased at a notably slower rate (2 percent) than on average in the last ten years (3.8 percent per year since 2003, excluding the credit crunch years),” the report adds. China’s emissions are plateauing, after its economy’s mega-boom that began in the early 2000s has begun to level off. The EU’s emissions have continue to decline, slowly.

The report also notes that there’s a ‘decoupling’ underway, wherein GDP is growing even when carbon emissions slow (the two have historically been intrinsically linked). That’s because the globe is shifting to embrace a bigger service economy, and relying a bit less on industrial production.

Sadly, that’s not happening nearly fast enough. According to scientists who have estimated our global carbon budget, ​we have a​pproximately 1,200 gigatons of carbon left to burn before we see levels of warning that may be altogether destabilizing to human civilization—2˚C or 3.7˚F worth of temperature rise. Last year, we ate through 37 gigatons of said budget.

The fact that we’re still shattering carbon production records in the face of global calamity—after 2˚C of warming, scientists worry about ​’runaway’ effects like methane feedbac​k loops—is disquieting. The fact that our international treaty process is woefully toothless and has taken decades to make the tiniest baby step, is further cause for worry.

Unless the international community can quell its thirst for coal and oil, and help developing economies grow with clean power sources, we’re heading for more sea level rise, more drought, and melting poles.

It’s one record we need to stop breaking.

Collective statement of the Third National Coal and Thermal Power Gathering

by

Following is the text of the Collective Statement of the Third National Coal and Thermal Power Gathering held at Dumka, Jharkhand on 16-17 October 2014.

Protest_Third-National-Coal-and-Thermal-Power-Gathering

Third National mm&P Gathering on Coal Mines and Thermal power was held on 16-17 October at the Social Development Centre, Dumka, Jharkhand. More than 300 affected peoples from coal mining area and mm&P representatives participated from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Telangana, West Bengal, Karnataka, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

The two day gathering reviewed the situation of coal mining and thermal power in the country, particularly in the light of the recent Supreme Court’s historic judgement to cancel the allocation of all coal blocks granted to private companies. People from different areas presented the conditions prevailing in their regions and the machinations of the government and the private companies in the process. After deliberating on the situation and recognising the need to continuously expose the human and environmental costs of such illegal decisions, the gathering unanimously resolved to step-up action and

    1. Demand withdrawal of all the cases against protestors in all the coal and other projects, particularly in those coal blocks which have been cancelled by Supreme Court in it’s judgment dated 25 August, 2014. Cases should be immediately withdrawn and all the injured and those killed by the police repression and firing should be appropriately compensated;
    2. Demand cancellation of all statutory clearances granted to the coal and thermal projects granted earlier to this judgement of the Supreme Court and new such projects shall seek afresh clearances under environment, forest and tribal laws.
    3. Demand CBI enquiry into the police firing on protestors opposing coal, dam and thermal plant in Kathikund, Jharkand in 2008; illegal land deals of Heavy Engineering Corporation and the illegal appointment of over 9000 ineligible people in Damoder Valley Corporation;
    4. Demand resolution of the legacy issues and pending resettlement and rehabilitation;
    5. We totally oppose the dilution of the protective laws such as Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act, Chhota Nagpur Tenancy Act.
    6. We condemn the efforts and intention of central Government to dilute the provision of environment and forest laws in favour of corporate. The reality, notwithstanding the rhetoric of protecting rivers and environment, is the systematic dilution, amendment and/or abolition of the jurisprudential, constitutional, fundamental rights based on internationally recognized instruments of environmental and community protection built into the country’s laws, rules, regulations and legal system.Some of the most glaring instances of these have been:
      • The High Level Committee, setup to ‘reform’ Environmental Laws has been given a mandate to overhaul all green laws and make them investor friendly, within a framework of 2 months.
      • 240 projects cleared by the Ministry within 3 months a time period that simply cannot be adequate to undertake proper environmental impact studies, public hearings at local sites, and other mandated procedures
      • Delinking forest clearance from the green signal that is given by the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), to projects around tiger reserves, national parks and sanctuaries. Previously forest clearance could only be given after the NBWL approval.
      • Reducing the need for NBWL approvals for projects within 10 km around protected areas to only 5 km.
      • Relaxing procedures under the Forest Conservation Act, which requires central approval of diversion of forestlands, for linear projects through forest areas, projects in forests and eco-sensitive areas along international borders and in “Naxal-affected” areas.
      • Doing away with the need for public hearings for coal mines of less than 16 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) capacity (from the earlier 8), and allowing onetime expansion of mines up to 6 mtpa if they are already of 20 mtpa size.
      • Exempting irrigation projects affecting less than 2,000 hectares from needing environmental clearance, and allowing state governments to clear those a effecting 10,000 hectares.
      • Proposed amendments to the Green Tribunal and Land Acquisition Acts.
      • Systematic removal of independent voices from critical institutions of environmental and social governance
      • Reducing the budgetary allocation for the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) by 50%.
    7. We resolve to take up actions at local level immediately by movement groups on the 42 blocks which are to be transferred to Coal India Ltd (public sector undertaking), w.e.f. 31 March 2015.
    8. We demand the adoption of alternative development paradigm based on decentralised economic activities, decentralised renewable energy generation and equity.

This programme organised during the week of Reclaim Power – Week of Global Action, express solidarity with all the people across the globe who are struggling to keep dirty development away and are seeking ecological justice.

Issued by R.Sreedhar, Chairperson, mm&P (mines minerals and PEOPLE), dated 17th October 2014.

KNOW US

GET INVOLVED

PROMOTE

Archives