Earlier this week, the Administrative Court postponed consideration of a lawsuit filed to challenge the government's decision to adopt coal as an energy source for the country's cement plants to 7 June. The suit had been filed by a number of NGOs and activists hoping to stop the use of coal after the cabinet decided to include coal within the energy mix used in the cement industry and other sectors. During the court session, the State Litigation Authority, the government's legal representative, rejected evidence of the dangers of using coal as a source of energy provided by lawyer Khaled Ali of the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR), an NGO. Faced by the country's energy crisis, the government has diverted supplies of natural gas to the country's factories, prompting cement companies to demand the use of coal for their plants. The cabinet gave the green light in April for the use of coal in the energy-intensive cement industry after months of indecision, saying that environmental studies had been carried out and that the plants would be able to use coal. The decision sparked concerns among environmentalists, who said the use of coal posed serious threats to health, as well as harming the environment and presenting economic shortcomings. “It was surprising that the State Litigation Authority denied that there had been a government decision to import coal as a source of energy on the grounds that no decision had been published in the official gazette,” Ahmed Droubi, coordinator of Egyptians Against Coal, a pressure group, said. A day before the court session, the Alexandria Port Authority said that 43,000 tons of coal had been received from the United States and Poland and unloaded at the allocated terminals. Droubi said that the country's cement companies had already started to import and utilise coal despite protests from environmentalists and others. He said that the government had appointed a committee to study the decision to use coal, but though the government had given the go-ahead to the cement companies this committee had not presented a report. “Certain businessmen will be the main beneficiaries of using coal as source of energy due to its low cost compared to importing gas or using less harmful alternatives,” he said. The cement industry consumes some nine per cent of the country's natural gas supplies, following electricity generation and the fertilisers industry. Mahinour Al-Badrawi, director of research at the ECESR, said that international financial institutions had been taking a stronger stand against funding coal-related projects. As part of the international commitment to the Climate Action Plan and to accelerate the transition to low-carbon energy worldwide, the leaders of the Nordic countries had joined the United States in ending public financing for new coal-fired power plants overseas, except in rare circumstances, she said. Al-Badrawi said that the movement to end public financing for fossil fuels had received huge support in July 2013, when the World Bank had concluded a three-year evaluation of its energy strategy by publishing its Energy Sector Directions, announcing that the Bank would limit financing for coal projects, except under “rare circumstances.” The Bank is the first of three international financial institutions — ahead of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) — to take a lead in limiting public support for coal and encouraging other international institutions to follow suit. As part of the campaign against using coal, the ECESR has started contacts with the EBRD about plans to finance the Egyptian government's use of coal. Its first letter was related to proposed plans to finance the use of coal in cement factories, which took off after negotiations between Minister of Trade and Industry Mounir Fakhry Abdel-Nour and Hildegard Gacek, Managing Director for the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean (SEMED) at the EBRD. The negotiations discussed the future funding of projects, specifically in the fields of energy and renewable energy. “We had concerns over the use of coal in cement factories and energy plants in Egypt, as the minister had indicated that the meeting had reviewed the possibility of funding coal-based projects to generate power for cement factories,” Al-Badrawi said. The letter was sent to the bank in January and was signed by several Egyptian and international organisations. In reply, the EBRD said that use of coal was rare under the its policies on energy and sustainable development. However, the bank did not consider that investment in coal for industries such as cement was out of line with its policies, it said. The bank believed that coal was still “essential” for energy production in the cement industry, the letter said. “Given that Egypt does not have its own coal supplies and will be importing its needs of the fossil fuel, burning hard-earned currency in the process and as an alternative to natural gas and the use of waste fuel, we cannot consider coal to be an essential source of energy,” Al-Badrawi said. “If we used 15 per cent of Egypt's solid waste for energy generation we could cover 93 per cent of the needs of the cement industries,” she concluded.
