Word: coal
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...need to diversify is now more urgent and the consensus to do so greater than when OPEC first played bully. Global energy demand is expected to triple by midcentury. The earth is unlikely to run out of fossil fuels by then, given its vast reserves of coal, but it seems unthinkable that we will continue to use them as we do now, for nearly 80% of our energy. It's not just a question of supply and price, or even of the diseases caused by filthy air. We know that global warming from heat-trapping carbon dioxide, a by-product...
Even oil companies are trying to cash in on the decarbonization trend. The world has gradually moved toward cleaner fuels--from wood to coal, from coal to oil and from oil to natural gas. Renewables are the next step. Royal Dutch/Shell has pledged to spend up to $1 billion on renewables through the next five years. Japanese manufacturers, led by Sharp and Kyocera, have moved aggressively into photovoltaic cells, which turn sunlight into electricity. And in April General Electric snapped up Enron Wind from the bankrupt energy giant. "We are on a journey to a lower-carbon world," says Graham...
...energy adviser to the United Nations Development Program, "without the political will." To begin with, widespread government subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear energy--estimated at some $150 billion per year--must be dismantled to level the playing field for renewables. Policymakers must factor in the price of pollution: coal plants are more expensive than renewable power when one includes the cost of scrubbers on smokestacks and the expense of health care for coal-related illnesses; nuclear energy costs would soar without government insurance. Environmentalists are calling for taxes on carbon to slow the growth of fossil-fuel...
There is a simple economic explanation for why many of China's cities have become shrouded in gray clouds of dust: it's cheap to pollute. Millions of Chinese drive mopeds and old automobiles that don't have catalytic converters, and much of the nation's electricity comes from coal-fired power plants. Technology from the 1950s, after all, is at bargain-basement prices. But that's because the prices don't reflect the hidden costs of air pollution: deaths from lung illnesses and millions of dollars wasted on health-care bills and lost worker productivity. The situation...
...Coal...