GHG Daily
1/11/2016
Global coal demand has stalled, the International Energy Agency announced late last month in its annual coal market report. The news comes after more than a decade of sharp growth in coal demand. The IEA attributed the pullback to economic restructuring in China, where coal demand is slowing, as well a greater policy support for low-carbon energies as indicated by the international climate agreement struck last month in Paris.
According to the IEA’s Medium-Term Coal Market Report 2015, regardless of the slowing of global coal demand, it is important to continue to support the development of carbon capture and storage technology in light of the recent Paris Agreement, which calls for the world to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius with an ambition to limit it to 1.5 degrees.
“Governments and industry must increase their focus on this technology if they are serious about long-term climate goals,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol in an agency release. “CCS is not just a coal technology. It is not a technology just for power generation. It is an emissions reduction technology that will need to be widely deployed to achieve our low-carbon future.”
