Bring back our coal

A historic meeting took place at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York last Friday where one hundred and seventy four countries signed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. All the signatories pledged to work to limit global temperature rise by less than 2 degrees Celsius by scaling down on carbon dioxide emissions and […]

A historic meeting took place at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York last Friday where one hundred and seventy four countries signed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. All the signatories pledged to work to limit global temperature rise by less than 2 degrees Celsius by scaling down on carbon dioxide emissions and deforestation. Nations that have not signed the agreement still have a year to do so.
We welcome the Paris Agreement because it aims to tackle one of the biggest environmental threats facing mankind. Despite it however, we urge the Federal Government of Nigeria to continue with efforts to diversify this country’s energy sources by taking another look at our vast coal reserves. We say this because the world’s major powers, which achieved industrialisation largely powered by coal, now discourage attempts by poorer countries to exploit this vital resource by claiming that it contributes to global temperature rises.
Despite their crocodile tears, coal is still a major energy source around the world. Six billion tonnes of hard coal and one billion tonnes of brown coal were used worldwide in 2010. Since 2000AD, global coal consumption has grown faster than any other fuel. The world’s five largest coal users, namely China, USA, India, Russia and Japan, together account for 77% of global coal use. It is important therefore that we supplement our energy sources with coal. Nigeria’s coal reserves are put at about 360 million metric tonnes. If well utilised, this can generate 30 percent of our electricity needs. However, our coal industry has been comatose for decades now while we embarked on the wild goose chase of pursuing so-called cleaner energy options.
Coal has many important uses in electricity generation, industrial and domestic applications. Coal’s biggest customers in the domestic market used to be Nigeria Railway Corporation and the old Electricity Corporation of Nigeria, ECN. When these two major customers moved on to other fuels, Nigeria Coal Corporation [NCC] began exporting coal to Italy and the United Kingdom. NCC’s sprawling facilities all over the East are now a sorry sight and thousands of its workers are still living in penury in the old mine camps, their gratuities and pensions unpaid for many years.
Given all the problems we are having in this country with power generation and the repeatedly failed promises of government to enhance power generation and supply, we urge government to take another, harder look at the coal option. China, for one, has used its huge coal reserves to power itself into economic great reckoning within a generation. The most advanced nations such as USA and Germany still use huge amounts of coal for energy uses, as do other industrial nations such as Russia and Poland. All the talk about coal being a dirty fuel has not stopped these nations from using it. We should not therefore be bamboozled by them into leaving millions of tons of coal in the ground based on the allegation that it is a dirty fuel.
Quite alright, these nations have found ways to treat coal and make it less dirty than it otherwise was. We can do the same thing. In fact, the Federal Ministry of Environment here mounted a campaign of coal briquetting 15 years ago to make it more amenable for domestic use. This will greatly help to save our forests. As it is, the global push to reduce carbon dioxide emissions also has a component that encourages tree planting because trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As a nation we can therefore offset all the carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere through exploiting our coal reserves with an accelerated national tree planting program. We can then display to the world our favourable ‘carbon balance sheet.’ Meanwhile we would have gained a lot of energy, money, economic growth and millions of jobs as well.