Coal is back - and the world will suffer

Forget air travel the biggest environmental headache facing us today is coal. The dirtiest fossil fuel of all is responsible for a quarter of the world’s CO2 emissions - and its use is soaring around the world. China, for instance, is building an average of two coal-fired power stations a week. India is set to construct about 100 in the next decade, while US corporations are pushing ahead with plans for 150 such plants.

Even Britain has joined the coal rush, with one company hoping to get the go-ahead to build the first new UK coal station since 1974; another company wants to build two more. And no wonder: the chimneys of Drax, the coal-fired Yorkshire power station, might pump out more CO2 than 103 countries, but at the last count its annual profits came in at £650m.

The resurgence of coal has been driven by talk of carbon capture and storage (CCS), a purported clean coal technology. But it’s still unclear whether CCS is viable - and it certainly won’t be available on a proper scale until well after 2030.

Meanwhile, the world is on a fast track towards irreversible disaster.