A number of activists and energy specialists have decided to file a suit against the government at the State Council in order to stop the decision to import coal. Anti-coal campaigner Ahmed Al-Droubi, coordinator of the Egyptians Against Coal pressure group, said that many people do not approve of the plan to import coal as this could come at the expense of other sectors of the economy and endanger the health of millions of Egyptians. The true costs of coal are not included in the price, Al-Droubi said. Were the health and environmental costs included, coal would not be competitive. Consenting to the import of coal would force the country to be dependent on a polluting fossil fuel for decades to come, he added. Al-Droubi said that the government's claims of applying strict environmental standards when using coal were misleading, since had this been done it would have taken at least two-and-a-half years in preparation and for the installation of equipment to reduce emissions and toxic waste before the green light was given. “It takes 27 months to install flow gas desulphurisation in a factory and the cost reaches about $420 per kilowatt in power plants, much higher than using the solar energy,” he added. The technology used involved mercury, Al-Droubi said, which was expensive and was only used in eight per cent of US factories and power plants and would probably not be available in Egypt for some time. “If you pour a teaspoonful of mercury into a lake, the fish will be unsafe to eat. This gives an idea of how toxic mercury is,” Al-Droubi said. Coal is also not better than other forms of energy in terms of cost, since generating energy from coal increased by 13 per cent from 2008 to 2013, whereas the cost of generating energy from solar power declined by 80 per cent during the same period. Moreover, investments in coal-operated production lines will only start to break even in 15 years' times, meaning that shifting to coal will not be a temporary step but is included in future plans. “If they spend millions of dollars on this investment, they will try to benefit from it to the maximum,” he added. “Changing to coal will hinder the opportunity to accelerate the transition to a cleaner and healthier energy future.” Environmental costs: Coal is the dirtiest of all energy sources and the greatest contributor to global warming. Coal-fired power plants have the highest ratio of CO2 output per unit of electricity of all fossil fuels. In 2013, the head of the UN climate agency advised that most of the world's coal reserves should be left in the ground to avoid catastrophic global warming. Coal burning also produces hundreds of millions of tons of solid waste products annually, including fly ash, bottom ash, and flue-gas desulfurisation sludge which contain approximately 20 toxic-release chemicals, including arsenic, lead, mercury and other heavy metals. Mercury is released when coal is burned and later falls to the earth, ultimately making its way into the water supply and contaminating it. Humans can suffer mercury poisoning from eating contaminated fish. Mercury is most dangerous as a developmental toxin, causing brain damage, mental retardation, blindness, and other problems in fetuses and the breastfeeding babies of contaminated mothers. Coal plants emit radiation in the form of radioactive fly ash, which can be inhaled and ingested and incorporated into crops. Coal-fired power plants without effective fly ash capture systems are one of the largest sources of human-caused background radiation exposure. In 2008, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other international organisations calculated that coal particulate pollution causes approximately one million deaths annually across the world, which is approximately one third of all premature deaths related to all air pollution sources. Economic costs: A major EU-funded research study known as Externalities of Energy or ExternE, undertaken over the 1995 to 2005 period, found that the cost of producing electricity from coal would double from its present value if external costs such as damage to the environment and to human health were taken into account. It was estimated in the study that external, downstream fossil fuel costs amounted to up to one to two per cent of the EU's entire gross domestic product (GDP), with coal the main fossil fuel accountable for this. This was before the external cost of global warming from these sources was included. The study also found that the environmental and health costs of coal alone were 0.06 euros per kilowatt/hour (kWh), with the energy sources having the lowest external costs associated with them being nuclear power at a cost of 0.0019 euros per kWh, and wind power at 0.0009 euros per kWh. Annual health costs in Europe from the use of coal to generate electricity are €42.8 billion, or $55 billion.
