By Paul Homewood
There’s a story going back to BBC reporting on Svalbard.
Svalbard has been mining coal since the early 1900s. The last remaining mine is expected to close in three years’ time to help Norway reduce emissions. The BBC know which side it is on:
“If the fastest warming place on earth can’t give up fossil fuels, what hope is there for other places?”
Of course, it is deeply ironic that Svalbard’s climate was just as mild as it was when these mines opened up as it is now!
Most of the coal produced is sent to Svalbard’s coal power plant, which provides nearly all of the island’s electricity, as well as provides heating for the Longyearbyen area. The rest of the coal is exported to steel mills in Europe. So, what does the BBC suggest people on the island do to keep warm and provide electricity when there’s no more coal? Most likely they will have to enter it, though there are also plans to burn replacement oil. Either way, emissions will go up instead of down.
In the long run, there is a crackpot plan to use hydrogen, produced by electrolysis from surplus wind energy in Finnmark, hundreds of miles away. This wind power really doesn’t exist at the moment, so more wind farms will have to be built there. And the resulting hydrogen will have to be transported, resulting in more costs and emissions.
Other plans involve building a long, extremely expensive cable or using LNG.
All of these plans will be much more expensive than Svalbard’s coal power, and will certainly take years to implement. In the meantime, it’s possible the BBC wants the Svalbarders to burn whale oil, as their ancestors did in the past. Hey, at least it’s “renewable”, though I doubt even the BBC would call it “green”!
But the ultimate irony is that, as the BBC reports, tourism is now Svalbard’s main source of income. \ eco loon.
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