S2 Ep. 01 Slow Burn: Why We Can’t Quit Coal
Coal feels like history. Steam engines. Sooty faces. Museums and memorial plaques.
And yet it still generates around a third of the world’s electricity and accounts for roughly 37 percent of global carbon emissions. Every year, we burn close to one tonne of coal per person on Earth.
In this live recording from Octopus Energy & Octopus EV HQ, Fiona Howarth unpacks why coal refuses to fade quietly into the past.
Joining them are two exceptional guests:
Lucy Shaw
Energy investor and advisor. Founder of an energy and climate investment consultancy. Former infrastructure investor at Blackstone, Actis, Vena Energy and the IFC (World Bank Group). Former BCG consultant and ExxonMobil engineer. Fulbright Scholar with an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School. Lucy is currently writing a book titled Slow Burn on the global persistence of coal.
Dr Sam Geall
Associate Fellow at Chatham House and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Former CEO of Dialogue Earth (formerly China Dialogue). Specialist in China’s climate and energy transition, with a PhD in Social Anthropology and deep expertise on how energy, politics and industrial policy intersect in China.
Together, they explore a question that sounds simple and turns out to be anything but:
If coal is dirty, deadly and increasingly uneconomic, why are we still using so much of it?
Why coal still supplies around one third of global electricity
Why absolute coal use keeps rising, even as its share of the mix falls
How coal contributes an estimated 37% of global carbon emissions
Why China is simultaneously building record amounts of renewables and new coal capacity
How energy security, industrial policy and political legitimacy shape China’s coal strategy
What’s driving India’s continued expansion of coal
Why coal has become a culture war issue in the US
The role of jobs, identity and community in coal regions
Whether the UK really has “moved on” from coal, or simply offshored it
Why carbon capture is unlikely to rescue coal at scale
What a just transition actually looks like, and why most countries are still struggling to deliver one
Coal is declining in some regions. It is expanding in others. In many places, it is both shrinking and growing at the same time.
One thread ran through the entire conversation: coal is not just an energy source. It is a social system.
The question is not simply how to shut coal down. It is how to do so without hollowing out the places that built their lives around it.
Lucy Shaw
Follow Lucy on Substack
Dr Sam Geall
Chatham House – Environment & Society Centre
Oxford Institute for Energy Studies
https://www.oxfordenergy.org
Dialogue Earth
https://dialogue.earth
Further reading on China’s energy transition
Dialogue Earth – China energy coverage
https://dialogue.earth/en/tag/china-in-the-world/
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