Why
Persian Gulf States are Switching to Coal
Spiegel Online
International
By Wolfgang Reuter
These Muslim
States Are Planning to Have Electric Power Even If Their Oil Wells, And Or Refineries
are Taken Out!!! It Also Appears
That They Are Fully Aware Of Efforts In The Oil
Jihad To Continue To Drive Up Oil Prices Seeking
To Break The Back Of The West.
The
Persian Gulf may be sitting atop massive oil
reserves. But with prices for crude skyrocketing, it makes more sense to sell
it than to burn it. Instead, the Gulf is turning to coal for its energy needs
-- to the detriment of the climate.
For Alfred Tacke,
CEO of the Essen energy giant Evonik Steag, it's the
yellowish-brown pall below that tells him the plane he's on is approaching the Persian Gulf. Beneath the haze, he knows, is Kuwait, which
has five large-scale gas- and oil-fired power plants in operation. The power they generate provide around-the-clock electricity for
Kuwait's
gigantic seawater desalination plants and the country's enormous
air-conditioning needs.
"Here, you only need to stick your finger in the sand and
you're likely to strike oil or gas," says Tacke,
whose energy group ranks fifth among Germany's electricity producers.
But Tacke has his own ideas about how to make money
in the region. And they center on a different kind of black gold: coal-fired
power plants. "We're currently in the process of discussing the conditions
for projects of this kind," he says.
As odd as the idea may seem, coal power in the gulf is just one
more outcome of skyrocketing oil prices. In a world with dramatically disparate
ideas on how or even whether to address the risks of global warming, demand for
coal plants across the globe is growing rapidly to the detriment of efforts to
increase the production of renewable energies such as solar, hydro and wind.
Nowhere is that demand more paradoxical than in the oil-rich Middle East. At the end of April, for example, the
state-owned Oman Oil Company signed a memorandum of understanding with two
Korean companies on the construction and operation of several coal-fired power
plants. Dubai,
for its part, is initially planning to build at least four large facilities
with a cumulative output of 4,000 megawatts. Abu Dhabi also wants to get into the act.
Even Egypt is thinking of
constructing its first coal-fired plant on the shores of the Red
Sea.
Two-Hundred More Years of Coal
Other regions in the world are fuelling the trend as well.
Oil-rich Russia
is planning the construction of more than thirty new coal-fired power plants by
2011. In China
a new facility is connected to the grid about once every 10 days. Greenpeace
estimates that around five thousand coal-fired power plants will be in
operation worldwide by 2030.
The economics behind the coal fad are clear.
To produce a megawatt hour of electricity using Australian coal, it costs just
€11. Using natural gas, on the other hand, ups that price to €26 while
oil-fired power plants swallow up €50.50 per megawatt hour of electricity.
Plus, coal is likely to be available for quite some time to come.
Global coal reserves will last an estimated 100 more years and possibly even
twice that long. As a result, coal is relatively cheap and in some cases can
even be gleaned from open pit mines as in Australia, but also in the US, South
Africa, China and Russia. The difference between the prices of natural gas and
oil on the one hand, and coal on the other is growing increasingly large.
For the Gulf, the development is turning into a highly lucrative
business model. They are currently able to sell their oil at record prices on
the global market (currently over $140 a barrel). At the same time, they are
able to satisfy their own energy needs at a much lower cost with coal shipped
in from overseas.
From an environmental standpoint, of course, this trend is
devastating. The Gulf states, first and foremost the United Arab Emirates, are among the
world's boom regions. It is predicted that by 2015 the population of Dubai will double to a
total of 2.6 million. Per capita energy consumption in the Emirates is six
times higher than the global average and a third more than even the US average.
Deserts Devoid of Solar Power
Should coal play a major role in satisfying such a growing energy
demand in Dubai
and elsewhere, prospects for the global climate are dim. Even a modern
anthracite-fired power plant emits 750 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour of
electricity produced, twice as much as a gas-fired power plant and around 50
percent more than an oil-fired power plant. The amount of CO2 emitted by
lignite-fired power plants is much greater, further aggravating the greenhouse
effect.
The situation is one which shows the limitation of climate
protection policies developed and implemented on the national rather than the
international level. Germany
has committed to reduce its CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2020 relative to
1990 levels and is striving to achieve double that reduction figure. Many Gulf States, on the other hand, including the United Arab Emirates,
are classified as developing countries -- meaning that even though they've
ratified the Kyoto Protocol, they have no obligation to reduce their CO2
emissions.
A quick look at the potential of solar power
in the region shows the absurdity of this situation. In the sun-baked Gulf, one
square meter of solar cells produces at least 2,200 kilowatt hours of
electricity per year. In Germany
annual output for a square meter is less than half that amount. In the Gulf States, though,
solar energy is much too expensive when compared with coal. In contrast to Germany, there
are no subsidies for those who invest in solar collectors.
In Germany
last year, solar power facilities with an output of 1,300 megawatts were
installed. In Saudi Arabia
the other Gulf States,
it was just 36 megawatts. Even if only a fraction of the solar electricity
subsidies available in Germany
were available in the Gulf, the positive effect for the global climate would be
many times greater.
For the moment, though, there is currently not enough political
support for solutions of this kind, neither in the oil-producing countries nor
in the industrialized nations. Which means that Alfred Tacke of Evonik Steag is hoping for tidy profits in the future.
"The Gulf," he says hopefully, "is a growth region for us."
Translated from the German by Larry Fischer
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,563502,00.html