Of Top 100 Owners Of World's Most Polluting Coal Plants, 7/Top 10 Chinese, 6/Top 20 American
The 100 global power companies most at risk from growing pressure to shut highly polluting coal plants have been revealed in a new report from Oxford University. Chinese companies dominate the top of the ranking but US companies, including Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, occupy 10 of the top 25 places.
The analysis, produced to help investors assess the risk of major financial losses, also found French energy giant GDF Suez was third in the list of most polluting coal station fleets in the world. The new analysis ranked the companies by how much electricity they produced from sub-critical plants. The major German utilities RWE and E.ON both appeared in the top 25, along with South Africa’s Eskom and Australia’s AGL Energy.
“Sub-critical coal-fired power stations are the first thing we need to kill off if we want to tackle climate change,” said Ben Caldecott, the report’s lead author and director of the Stranded Assets Programme at Oxford University. As well as carbon emissions, the air pollution and pressure on water resources caused by these coal plants were also analysed.
Caldecott said some Chinese coal plants were already being closed due to public anger over air pollution, while others in India have been unable to operate for months at a time due to a lack of water. However, subcritical coal-fired power stations continue to be built, despite producing 75% more carbon pollution and using 67% more water as the most efficient - but more costly - plants.
EDIT
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/13/us-and-chinese-companies-dominate-list-of-most-polluting-coal-plants
Stranded Assets Report: http://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/research-programmes/stranded-assets/SAP%20Report%20Printed%20Subcritical%20Coal%20Final%20mid-res.pdf
