Scientists, civil society and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat are urging the coal industry to change its behaviour if the world was to sustain any chance of keeping the total temperature increase to 2 degrees celsius.

"The IPCC's findings have been endorsed by 195 governments, including all of those in which you operate. We are at unprecedented greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere; our carbon budget is half spent. If we continue to meet energy needs as we have in the past, we will overshoot the internationally agreed goal to limit warming to less than two degree Celsius,” said Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, as she addressed the coal industry on Monday morning.

The Polish government is hosting the International Coal and Climate Summit, only a few blocks away from the UNFCCC 19^th Conference of the Parties (COP19), in the Polish capital city of Warsaw.

“Hosting a PR event for the coal industry during a climate conference is a slap in the face to all the people suffering from the catastrophic impacts of climate change,” said Martin Kaiser, head of the Greenpeace International Delegation to COP19, in a press release.

Two actions, including a Greenpeace banner drop, were held outside of the Ministry of the Economy’s headquarters, where the summit is taking place today. The purpose was to signal disapproval and call to a shift away from coal and towards cleaner energy.   

“As the major producers and users of fossil fuels, rich countries have a moral obligation to help those that, like the Philippines, suffer the knock-on effect from what is being burned in places like Poland. Here, at this COP19 it is absolutely necessary to make a plan to help those who are victimized by our addiction to fossil fuels,” added Kaiser.

On the same day, a group of leading climate and energy scientists released a report showing that what the industry refers to as a “high efficiency coal” does not take into account climate science nor does it address the current and future impacts of climate change.

“[…] unabated coal consumption is not compatible with staying below 2 degrees celcius limit, if we like it or not,” said P.R. Shukla, of the Indian Institute of Management and one of the 27 scientists who wrote the report, in a press statement.

Unabated coal refers to any form of coal extraction that does not include carbon capture and storage (CCS), which refers to burying CO2 emissions from fossil fuel extractions back into the ground.   

The report states that the projection of coal extraction is “catastrophic” for climate change. Therefore, the use of unabated coal must go down and the majority of fossil fuels must remain in the ground. This is particularly relevant to the coal industry because coal can be more easily replaced by a cleaner alternative than liquid fuels, especially that the technology exists and is affordable.

When asked about the CCS technology, Bert Metz, former co-chair of the IPCC's Working Group on Climate Change Mitigation and one of the authors of the report said that the scientists did not want to endorse or refute the technology.

“Alternatives to fossil fuels are already available and affordable,” he said. “It is therefore up to the coal industry to show that coal fired plants with CCS can compete with other zero carbon options.

Samantha Smith of WWF thinks it is unlikely. “Clean coal is a myth, there is no two ways about it,” she said. “It [CCS] is not going to happen. It is too expensive, it is not practical and there is not enough geological storage space for all the carbon that these plants would put out.”