Coal news and updates

The Brazilian government has announced it wants nearly $4bn of investment in coal mining, despite international calls to phase out the most polluting of fossil fuels.

 

The Mines and Energy Ministry has published a “programme for the sustainable use of national mineral coal”, which aims to leverage $3.9 billion in investment in coal over the next ten years. It would support the coal sector in Brazil’s southern states until 2050.

 

The ministry says the money will be used to modernise and provide incentives to Brazil’s coal-fired thermal power plants and could create 600 jobs in mining operations. It added the southern region’ coal reserves could supply 18.6 GW of power over 100 years.

 

The programme was released on the same day as a major report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which found that temperatures in South America are expected to increase at a greater rate than the global average and anticipated an increasing frequency of heat extremes in the Amazon.

 

UN secretary general António Guterres said the report should be a “death knell for coal and fossil fuels”.

 

Former environment minister Izabella Teixera told Climate Home News the government’s lifeline for the coal sector was a “big surprise” and described the use of the word “sustainable” in the programme’s title as “a joke”.

 

She suggested that Jair Bolsonaro’s government had probably been lobbied by the coal sector and wanted to appeal to the president’s base in the southern coal-producing state of Santa Catarina.

 

“It seems like a lobby to ‘preserve the backyard’ and give a political answer to Bolsonaro’s white supporters in [Santa Catarina]”, she said.

 

 

Source : https://www.climatechangenews.com