14 DAY TRIAL // Apart from investing heavily in putting an end to deforestation for agriculture, the UK has decided to pull the plug on funding for coal-fired power plants overseas.
Thus, the country's Energy and Climate Change Secretary Edward Davey has announced that the UK will no longer use public money to support the construction of facilities that burn coal to generate energy.
By the looks of it, such funding will only be allocated to poor countries that have no choice except rely on coal to have their energy demands at least partly met.
“We need to take account of new technologies such as Carbon Capture Storage and the very poorest countries where there are no alternatives,” Secretary Edward David said, as cited by Sustainable Review.
“But many developing countries will soon find solar and similar energy technologies will become cheaper not just cleaner,” he wished to stress.
News of the UK's decision to no longer support the coal industry by financing the development of new plants comes shortly after the US made the very same promise.
Thus, in late October, the latter also announced that it was to strictly limit coal funding abroad. Much like the UK, the US said that, under certain circumstances, it would make exceptions, but that those would be few and far in between.
Speaking at the UN climate summit in Warsaw, Poland, Secretary Edward Davey argued that, all things considered, ending funding for the development for new coal plants was the right thing to do both for the UK and the US, seeing how both countries had promised to do their best to combat climate change and global warming.
“It is completely illogical for countries like the UK and the US to be decarbonizing our own energy sectors while paying for coal-fired power plants to be built in other countries,” he pointed out.
Furthermore, “It undermines global efforts to prevent dangerous climate change and stores up a future financial time bomb for those countries who would have to undo their reliance on coal-fired generation in the decades ahead, as we are having to do today.”