Najam in TNS on Coal Use in Pakistan
Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was interviewed for an article on a recently conducted independent evaluation by Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Pakistan’s power sector and coal power plants.
Najam was quoted in a February 18, 2018 article in The News on Sunday entitled “A Catastrophe in the Making.”
From the text of the article:
Whereas, Dr. Adil Najam, Dean Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, categorically said, “Coal, in general, is going to always be an environmental liability. That is obvious, and not really the key point to make. To me, the most important point is that coal no longer makes economic sense. And it will make less and less economic sense in future. Making such an investment is a bad idea for our future children, not only because we will be leaving them an untenable environmental legacy with coal, but because we will also leave them with a horrendous economic burden.”
Dr. Najam, who has also been an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s report, further added, “We should also make it very clear, in our understanding as well as in our narrative, that there really is no such thing as ‘clean coal’. At best that is an aspiration, at worst it’s an oxymoron. Yes, there are relatively less and more dirty variants of producing power from coal, but, no, there are no clean versions.”
Adil Najam is the inaugural dean of the Pardee School and was a former Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore Pakistan. Learn more about him here.