Dark grime coats streets and collects on rooftops in the neighbourhood adjoining a sprawling cement manufacturing facility in the Egyptian city of Alexandria.
Activists and native residents accuse the plant operated by the Alexandria Portland Cement Firm (APCC), a subsidiary of Greece’s Titan Cement, of fouling the air by burning coal.
“Every night, we stare particles falling from their chimneys. Under boulevard lights, it is likely you’ll possibly additionally clearly stare the grime raining down,” acknowledged Mostafa Mahmoud, a grocery store owner in the Wadi al-Qamar neighbourhood.
Reuters may possibly well possibly no longer independently check the assertion. Titan Cement says the plant’s emissions are within staunch limits, and it plans to decrease its use of coal in coming years.
Adore many cement producers in Egypt and throughout North Africa, the manufacturing facility uses imported coal to fireside its kilns. Lately, more and more of the divulge’s coal is coming from the United States, consistent with US export records.
Fossil gas exports comprise been a sizzling subject on the United Countries climate conference in Baku this year, with activists and delegates from some climate-inclined countries arguing nations desires to be held accountable for the pollution they send a long way flung places – gradually to heart-broken developing nations – in the bag of oil, gas and coal. Some are hunting for to salvage the ask of easy how to invent this onto the agenda at future climate summits.
A landmark agreement reached in Paris in 2015 to fight climate commerce requires countries to set targets and story on progress reducing national phases of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. But it undoubtedly would no longer impose such requirements for emissions generated from fossil fuels they drill, mine and ship somewhere else.
That has allowed countries take care of the United States, Norway, Australia and others to command they are making progress toward world climate objectives whereas also producing and exporting fossil fuels at breakneck tear, acknowledged Invoice Hare, co-founding father of Climate Scuttle Tracker, an autonomous scientific mission that tracks authorities climate action.
“These forms of fossil-gas-exporting countries can salvage to study staunch with their home climate action,” he acknowledged on the sidelines of the COP29 conference in Baku this week. “Their exported emissions are any other person’s misfortune.”
US fossil gas exports – alongside with coal, oil, gas and refined fuels – led to over 2 billion heaps of carbon dioxide equal emissions in diversified countries in 2022, consistent with a calculation implemented by Climate Scuttle Tracker and verified by Reuters utilizing records from the Global Energy Agency. That’s equal to about a third of US home emissions, the records showed.
A years-long drilling relate has made the US the arena’s high oil and gas producer, whereas sturdy inquire of has lifted its coal exports for four years working, consistent with records from the US Energy Files Administration (EIA).
Asked how Washington squares its climate ambitions with its fossil gas production and exports, President Joe Biden’s climate adviser, Ali Zaidi, acknowledged sturdy energy output changed into as soon as wished to preserve person costs low for the length of a transition to cleaner fuels.
“I invent no longer deem there may possibly be social licence for a decarbonisation playbook that locations upward charge strain for retail customers in the market,” Zaidi instructed Reuters.
Incoming president Donald Trump, a climate commerce sceptic, has acknowledged he desires to extra boost the nation’s fossil gas production.
For diversified producers, greenhouse gas emissions from fossil gas exports normally outweigh home emissions, Climate Scuttle Tracker acknowledged.
That changed into as soon as staunch for Norway, Australia and Canada in 2022, basically the most most contemporary year for which records is available for all countries analysed. Reuters received queer salvage entry to to the calculations.
Norway’s Ministry of Climate and Ambiance acknowledged it is as a lot as diversified nations to administer their very win carbon footprints.
“Every nation is accountable for reducing its win emissions,” the ministry acknowledged in an announcement to Reuters.
Officers on the environment and climate ministries of Canada and Australia failed to comment.
Addressing the summit in Azerbaijan, host President Ilham Aliyev accused some Western politicians of double standards for lecturing his authorities about its oil and gas use, asserting, “They higher study at themselves.”
CEMENT AND BRICKMAKERS
Most US gas exports now crawl to European countries hunting for to decrease dependence on Russia, whereas China has change into one among the head investors of US coarse and coal, consistent with the EIA figures. The US’s greatest growth marketplace for coal, on the different hand, is North Africa.
US coal mines exported round 52.5 million fast heaps globally in the first half of 2024, up almost 7% from the same period a year ago, the records showed.
Worthy of the delay changed into as soon as pushed by cement and brickmakers in Egypt and Morocco, which together took in better than 5 million fast heaps over the period, the EIA acknowledged in a most contemporary story.
“These clients value the high warmth negate material of US thermal coal, which makes their manufacturing operations more environment friendly,” the story acknowledged.
