In 2017 there are still those who invest in coal — here is the blacklist
Energy — di Cecilia Bergamasco
German NGO Urgewald has created a database of the 120 companies supporting the construction of new coal plants.
In 2017 there are still those who invest in coal — here is the blacklist
German NGO Urgewald has created a database of the 120 companies supporting the construction of new coal plants.
There is no longer any room for coal — the future lies in renewables. This has often been emphasised by Christiana Figueres, the former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Unfccc). A message that not everyone appears to have taken on board, given that companies continue to invest in coal. A German non-profit organisation has drawn up a list of those who keep playing with the future of our planet.
The blacklist of those investing in new coal plants
German NGO Urgewald has mapped the companies that have expressed an interest in, or are financially supporting, the construction of new coal plants. All the findings have been organised into a database compiled by bringing together public data gathered from company balance sheets, websites and individual investor documents. The database is freely accessible online at www.coalexit.org. The work was carried out together with organisations such as Banktrack, Les Amis de la Terre, Rainforest Action Network, Development Yes Open Mines No, Asian People's Movement on Debt and Development, as well as Italian organisation Re:Common, an association that works to raise awareness of and prevent corruption and the destruction of territories.
The blacklist examined 120 companies that are actively betting on coal, with over 1,600 new power stations planned or under construction worldwide, for a total of 840,000 megawatts of capacity.
Among the companies most actively supporting new infrastructure for coal exploitation, India's Thermal Power Corporation tops the rankings (38,000 megawatts), followed by Chinese firms SPIC (31,500 megawatts), China Datant (28,900 megawatts) and Shenhua (17,250 megawatts). The first African entity is South African company Eskom, which comes in fifteenth place, while for Europe it is Poland's Polska Grupa Energetyczna.
Coal, an investment choice destined to fail
Reading the blacklist of companies involved with coal, one striking fact is that many are not strictly tied to the coal industry. ToyoInk is a particularly interesting case. It is an ink and printing materials manufacturer based in Malaysia that is seeking new business models. Turning a blind eye to the fact that clean energy offers more profitable project costs for investors and, at the same time, the benefit of broadly stable regulatory support worldwide — as an analysis by Frost & Sullivan found — ToyoInk has decided to move into the coal industry itself. A missed opportunity, given that investment in renewable sources is in full expansion at the expense of traditional electricity generation methods.
The risk of expanding coal use where it does not yet exist
The most worrying aspect highlighted by Urgewald's research concerns the intention of some investors to build coal plants where coal has never previously been exploited. This is what could happen in Pakistan, which would go from 190 to 15,278 megawatts of capacity, in Egypt (from zero to 17,000 megawatts) and Bangladesh (from 250 to 15,960 megawatts), but also in Malawi and the United Arab Emirates. For the investment to yield a satisfactory financial return, these new plants would need to operate for at least the next 40 years. Such initiatives could sweep away at a single stroke all the efforts that another part of the world is making to contain the rise in global temperatures and limit climate change. If their destructive projects were to see the light of day, a temperature increase of around 4°C could be expected — an enormous deviation from the maximum threshold of 1.5°C identified as the safety limit by climate scientists.
Italy paying little attention to where it invests
The list compiled by Urgewald contains no Italian companies directly involved in new coal-related projects. However, an in-depth piece by Re:Common has identified the presence of some Italian investors behind companies included in the blacklist. This is the case with Polish firm Polska Grupa Energetyczna (Pge), the most active in Europe in supporting new infrastructure for coal exploitation. 85 per cent of the energy produced by Pge comes from coal, including 30 per cent from lignite, the lowest-quality and most polluting coal in existence. This has not deterred Generali, which in 2016 rewarded it with 33.8 million dollars of investment, and which can therefore rightfully claim the grim distinction of sponsoring the expansion of the worst coal in existence in Europe.