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Lobbying for coal in Brussels is a struggle. Coal is widely perceived as an industry of the past, kept alive only by subsidies and bad for the environment from pit to power station. But it has been this way since the 1990s.

 

“Coal was difficult then and it's still difficult now,” says Brian Ricketts, secretary-general of industry body Euracoal. “But the way it is often treated is to ignore it, which is crazy. Twenty-seven per cent of our electricity in Europe comes from coal, so you can't ignore it, it's there. Moreover it is needed for the future.” Meanwhile, the remaining subsidies will disappear by 2018.

 

While this attitude is a problem, it is also one of the reasons Ricketts was attracted to the Euracoal job. “Instead of demonising an industry, I think it would be better to plot a path forward which recognises the value of what is being done,” he says. “That's what I'm trying to do here for the people I once worked with.”

 

Ricketts is an engineer by training, albeit not with experience at the coal-face. “I'm a mechanical engineer, which for a mining engineer is not too bad. They can just about tolerate that,” he says,playfully. A graduate of Loughborough University in the UK, his first job involved working on hydraulic systems for aerospace company Dowty. A move to GEC brought him into the broader areas of transport and energy systems engineering, and a specific interest in power-plant simulations.

 

In 1997 he moved to RJB Mining, which had acquired most of the UK coal industry when it was privatised several years earlier. Ricketts' assignment was to work on the planning application and initial engineering for a clean coal power-plant. In the process he got his first taste of lobbying, supporting charismatic chief executive Richard ‘King Coal' Budge as he campaigned for UK government support. This also brought him to Brussels, where Budge wanted to tap into the capital of the European coal and steel research fund.

 

Ricketts left the company, then renamed UK Coal, in 2005 and moved to the coal desk of the International Energy Agency in Paris. “The UK coal-mining industry was getting smaller, so many of us left at that period,” he recalls. “There is nobody like me left within UK Coal.” In Paris he analysed the industry and helped build links with China, visiting Beijing and the provinces numerous times to discuss clean coal. From Paris it was a short step to Brussels in 2010.

 

Euracoal's traditional constituency is the national coal associations, but this is gradually changing as companies with international reach join up. What they want, above all, is a favourable investment climate. “The uncertainty created not just by European energy and climate policy but also by national policies has left people unwilling to take the risk to invest in assets which Europe needs for the future,” Ricketts says. For example, more realistic carbon- dioxide reduction targets would unlock investment in cleaner, more efficient power-plants.

 

Although changing the Brussels mindset is hard work, Ricketts and his two colleagues can claim some successes. For instance, conventional power generation was absent from early drafts of Horizon 2020, the new research and innovation programme, until amendments were introduced by the European Parliament. He is even moderately encouraged that the broad objections to coal may finally be softening.

 

“It's a bit like boxing,” he says. “You get some good punches in and then you get beaten again, but then how many jobs give you persistent reward? You have to go through those difficult periods to get to the good points.”

 

Ian Mundell is a freelance journalist based in Brussels.

 

 

Source: http://www.europeanvoice.com/