Coal vs coronavirus
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2020
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Coal has suffered the brunt of the huge slump in electricity demand as the world has gone into lockdown. It has highlighted the fossil fuel's Achilles Heel: When there is too much supply on the grid, it's coal-fired power stations that get switched off, not solar or wind.
Justin Rowlatt speaks to the head of the International Energy Agency Fatih Birol, as well as analysts covering the two countries most central to coal's future. Delhi-based Sunil Dahiya says that India is already reckoning with renewable energy that is cheaper 24/7 than the cost of operating its existing coal fleet. Meanwhile Shirley Zhang of energy analysts Wood Mackenzie says that China's plans to build new coal-fired power stations is already baked in.
Plus, Business Daily's favourite chemistry professor, Andrea Sella of University College London, explains why coal played such a central role in getting the Industrial Revolution started, with the help of an uncooperative steam engine.
Producer: Laurence Knight
(Picture: Cooling towers at the decommisioned Willington Power Station in northern England; Credit: Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily with me, Justin Rowlat. Today we are pitting coal against COVID, |
| 0:08.1 | a title fight that could shape world history. How so? Well, when the coronavirus hit, it revealed |
| 0:14.5 | something fascinating about the underlying vulnerability of the coal industry. |
| 0:19.2 | We have seen a big decline in the global energy demand. |
| 0:24.3 | And the big chunk comes from coal. |
| 0:27.0 | The decline in consumption is the largest since Second World War. |
| 0:32.4 | We'll be discovering why some people believe that the economics of energy |
| 0:36.1 | have now moved decisively against the fuel |
| 0:39.8 | that powered the Industrial Revolution. |
| 0:42.5 | Renewable energy, you can supply you power 24 hours a day at par or even cheaper than |
| 0:48.0 | operating coal and much, much cheaper than any new coal been built anywhere in India. |
| 0:53.3 | So has COVID beaten coal? |
| 0:56.0 | Find out here on Business Daily from the BBC World Service. |
| 1:03.7 | So the coronavirus has shown us something very interesting about coal. |
| 1:08.8 | And to explore that idea, I've leapt on my bicycle, |
| 1:11.4 | cycle through London, to see Business Daily's chemist of choice, Andrea Seller, at his home. |
| 1:17.5 | Andrei, you're Professor of Chemistry at University College London. And we're going to explore |
| 1:21.8 | this extraordinary fuel coal. And you have got this really rather interesting little engine, |
| 1:26.7 | haven't you? What does this tell us about coal? We've got a ridiculous little model steam tractor, which might actually |
| 1:33.2 | allow us to hear the industrial revolution in action. I'm just going to light a match. So it's a little |
| 1:39.5 | tiny. It's a replica Victorian steam tractor. It's got a big boiler. |
| 1:45.0 | We've put a little bit of fuel in there. |
... |
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