core sector communique

World Coal Institute Addresses Environmental Meetings in Stockholm & Bonn

11 June 2010

LONDON - The World Coal Institute has addressed two separate environmental conventions taking place across Europe on mercury and climate change.

At the first meeting of the UN Environment Programme's (UNEP) Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Mercury in Stockholm, WCI Chief Executive, Milton Catelin, addressed the meeting and took the opportunity to talk about the importance of encouraging wider deployment of technologies already available to tackle mercury emissions from coal use.

Mr Catelin stated: "...there are existing technologies being used in power plants to control nitrous oxide and sulphur dioxide emissions that are coincidentally reducing mercury emissions by 90%. In fact, three plants operating in Korea are reporting mercury emission reductions of more than 90%. This demonstrates that coal use is technically compatible with responsible mercury management."

At the UN climate change talks taking place in Bonn this week, WCI's new Policy Manager, Benjamin Sporton (on behalf of business and industry groups) made an intervention in the Subsidiary Body on Science and Technology (SB-STA) to encourage parties to move forward on the issue of Carbon Capture and Storage as Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project activities.

The inclusion of CCS as CDM Project Activities would strengthen the CDM and represent an important step towards accelerating the wide scale deployment of CCS and achieving the ultimate objective of the climate change treaties - the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol - the reduction of global CO₂ emissions.