InQ.IFBA Portal da Inovação & Qualidade
by Beatriz Lourenço
Mineral coal is considered the fossil fuel that pollutes the most and its burning acts as the biggest contributor to the current global climate change. About 90% of mineral coal reserves are found in the northern hemisphere, and the United States, individually, holds 19.5% of them, being the second largest holder in the world, only behind Russia, which holds about 56.5 % of reservations; moreover, in 2010, it was also ranked as the second largest coal producer in the world, succeeding China, and preceding the European Union, Australia, Russia and Indonesia.
Nowadays, the oil industry is at the center of the world’s production system, due to its productivity, versatility and high profitability, just as coal acted in the ‘First Industrial Revolution’. Although both fuels are fossil and sharply harmful to the environment, they are still used in large scale, for example, in power generation, causing serious environmental impacts that are becoming irreversible in the past few decades. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2007 around 917 million tons of mineral coals were sold worldwide.
According to Frontliner, in 2020, the United States had more than 60% of the energy matrix corresponding to fossil fuels, with 40% of this energy coming from natural gas and 20% from coal. However, according to US government, the following year, the share of coal use rose by 3%. Although the US is trying to find ways to make its matrix more sustainable, replacing fossil fuels with biodegradable resources, natural gas prices, for example: they delayed the development of the green agenda, which has a deadline of 2035 to decarbonize the electricity grid from the country.
At the G7 summit – a group formed by leaders of seven of the world’s largest economies (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and United States) that happened in Cornwall in 2021, Japan and the United States chose to block the agreement to define a final date for the end of the use of mineral coal as part of their energy matrix.
Another factor that interferes negatively with this deadline is the fact that in 2021, at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP 26), the United States, China and India, which are key countries for the global decarbonization process, did not sufficiently committed to the cause. The US didn’t impose a clear position and only declared that it would ban the use of coal in US territory by 2035, but did not declare anything about the extraction, production and selling promoted by them in other territories. On the other hand, China did the opposite and guaranteed that it would cease investments in coal plants in other territories.
