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The IEA, as a creature of its member governments, is inevitably a shill for radical and expensive climate policies. Its problem is that it keeps producing reports that reveal that the great transition to the wind- and solar-powered low-carbon future — allegedly required to save the world from climate catastrophe — is simply not happening. Still, the IEA always tries to put a positive face on inconvenient facts. Its report predicted that global coal demand would remain “stagnant” until 2022. Put another way, coal is refusing to die.

Sincecoal is the mother of all fuels for carbon-dioxide emissions, its reluctance to go away presents more than a marginal problem for “official” climate science, which likely exaggerates the problem a great deal, anyway. The IEA has a simple solution: it says that carbon capture, utilization and storage — that is, taking CO2 emissions from coal-fired plants and injecting them deep underground, or using them for some industrial purpose — must be made more economic, or at least be more heavily subsidized. We can because we must.

The IEA a shill for radical and expensive climate policies

Coal demand may be down 4.2 per cent over the past two years but that has a great deal more to do with the flood of cheap natural gas than the alleged “surge” in renewables. Germany’s renewables surge has actually led it to use more coal, for back up. Moreover, coal will still account for 36 per cent of the global “power mix” by 2022, and its declining use in developed countries will be matched by its increased use in developing countries, where the IEA admits that coal offers cheap and reliable electricity to people who need it most. Indian coal-fired power generation is expected to grow almost four per cent a year through 2022.