A coal industry report due to be published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) on the benefits of new coal-burning technology has been heavily criticised by experts.



The report, seen by the Guardian, is “deeply confused and deeply misleading” and a “litany of errors and false assumptions, clearly written ultimately as a disinformation tool”, according to two financial experts. They said the legitimacy conferred by the respected IEA on the report raised serious questions.

The report, the Socioeconomic Impacts of Advanced Technology Coal-Fuelled Power Stations, was produced by the IEA’s Coal Industry Advisory Board (CIAB), a group of coal industry executives that “provides advice to the IEA”.

Peabody Energy, which says global warming is “an environmental crisis predicted by flawed computer models”, RWE and Shenhua were directly involved in the report while Anglo American, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, E.ON, Arch Coal, Alpha Natural Resources and Eskom all provided input.

The report states it is “a complete and current set of facts, as well as a full and unbiased accounting of effects”, but fails to mention climate change at all. “Coal itself is not the cause of China’s air quality problem,” the report states. “What matters is not what goes in, but what comes out.”

The report then analyses the social and environmental benefits that may be offered by new, cleaner coal-fired powered stations.

But the report is “deeply confused and deeply misleading”, according to Richard Denniss, chief economist at the Australia Institute: “The paper pays scant attention to the health and social costs associated with coal mining and coal burning. The quality and quantity of analysis of the negative [effects] associated with coal mining and burning is fundamentally inadequate.”

Denniss said the report confuses the benefits to people of electrification and grid expansion with the economic benefits of building new generation coal-fired power stations: “The benefits of grid expansion are unrelated to the source of the electricity that flow along that grid.”

The report also compares the economic benefits that flow from significant investment in coal-fired electricity with the economic benefits of investing in nothing at all, he said. “An honest evaluation would focus on the additional benefits [of coal investment compared] to similar sized investments in other forms of infrastructure.”

An IEA spokeswoman said the CIAB reports are not official IEA publications: “The CIAB represents the views of its members. The IEA’s views on coal are clearly presented in our Special Report on Energy and Climate published in June 2015.”

Tim Buckley, at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis and who has 25 years of financial markets experience including 17 years at Citigroup, said: “The report is a litany of errors and false assumptions, clearly written ultimately as a disinformation tool. The CIAB is actually a formalised lobby group to the IEA but somehow such a report is entitled to utilise the logo of the IEA to give it a sense of legitimacy. Some serious questions need to be raised within the IEA itself.”

Buckley’s criticisms include the report suggesting benefits from more coal burning for India without mentioning or evaluating the 175GW renewable energy plan announced in 2015. He also flagged its criticism of nuclear power when it says “the risk of cancer is higher among uranium miners” without mentioning the “black lung” lawsuits underway in US coal-mining communities.

Buckley also said the CIAB had cherry-picked its case studies in China, India and Germany, which have little or no domestic gas.

“There is no evaluation of domestic coal versus domestic gas, such as is transforming the US, with tens of billions being invested in gas with the consequent near weekly announcements of coal-fired power plant closures,” he said. “There is [also] no evaluation of any of the increasingly viable investment alternatives being implemented at scale in each of China, India and Germany – namely wind, solar, hydro, nuclear and energy efficiency.”

The title page of the CIAB report seen by the Guardian says “International Energy Agency, Insights series 2015” and the final page says “IEA publications”. The IEA spokeswoman said: “The IEA cannot comment on a report that is not ours and has not been released.”

Note: The IEA did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian by the time of publication. The comments received after publication have now been added.