Does coal have a future?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2020
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Burning coal to generate electricity is one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions. But climate change aside, does it even make commercial sense anymore?
Laurence Knight speaks to clean energy investor Ramez Naam, who relays the story of how he managed to convince one major Asian bank chief executive to stop lending to new coal power projects on the grounds that he was unlikely to get his money back.
Another bank to have renounced lending to the coal industry is Standard Chartered. Their head of environmental and social risk, Amit Puri, explains why he thinks others will soon join the bandwagon. Meanwhile Laura Cozzi of the International Energy Agency warns that whatever the bankers may think, the fact is that most of the world's coal plants are in China, where it is the government that decides what gets built.
Plus, what to do with a derelict coal-fired power station? Laurence visits London's iconic Battersea Power Station (pictured) and speaks to Simon Murphy the man in charge of its redevelopment.
(Picture: Battersea Power Station; Credit: Johnny Greig/Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily. I'm Lawrence Knight. Today we look at the bad boy of climate change. |
| 0:07.9 | Coal currently is actually the largest part of our CO2 emissions and is continuing to grow, so we are not on track. |
| 0:14.4 | But forget about global warming. Does burning coal even make commercial sense anymore? |
| 0:19.6 | There's a recognition that coal assets will become stranded assets at some point, |
| 0:24.8 | and it's just a question of when. |
| 0:26.7 | The black stuff, in the red, here on Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:35.3 | So when it was fully operational, which was 1955 onwards, it was a million tonnes of coal a year brought in on the barge. |
| 0:42.9 | So riverside location was fundamentally important for that. |
| 0:46.6 | I'm visiting one of London's most iconic buildings, Battersea Power Station. |
| 0:51.7 | This former coal-fired power station has sat derelict on the banks of the Thames |
| 0:56.0 | for almost 40 years. And now it's finally being redeveloped, and my guide, Simon Murphy, is the man in |
| 1:03.6 | charge. It was Europe's largest brick building when it was built, six million bricks in it, |
| 1:08.6 | and most of which we've managed to bring back to life again. So |
| 1:11.8 | 95% of the old structure is being reused. So this is a very famous power station in London. It's an |
| 1:17.8 | enormous building, and it's been derelict for actually decades now. When was it decommissioned? |
| 1:22.9 | The power was finally turned off in 1983. So at its peak, it produced about 20% of all the power for London. |
| 1:29.1 | And then 1983, the switches were turned off. And then it was a question of what do you do with |
| 1:32.8 | the building like this? So what are you going to do with this building? Well, within the power station, |
| 1:36.7 | we're going to have 250 homes, offices for 5,000 people. So Apple are making this their new London campus. |
| 1:46.0 | And in addition, there'll be 100 plus shops, restaurants, cinemas and entertainment. Fantastic. So going from coal to now one of the |
| 1:52.4 | biggest tech companies in the world? Absolutely. Simon Murphy, thank you very much. Well, |
| 1:57.8 | derelict coal-fired power stations like this one are becoming something of a common sight in Britain. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.