ALEXANDRIA, Egypt/BAKU – Black dust covers the streets and collects on roofs in the neighborhood adjoining a sprawling cement factory in the Egyptian city of Alexandria.

Activists and local residents accuse the plant operated by the Alexandria Portland Cement Company (APCC), a subsidiary of the Greek group Titan Cement, of polluting the air by burning coal.

“Every night we see particles falling from their chimneys. Under the street lights you can clearly see the dust falling,” said Mostafa Mahmoud, owner of a grocery store in the Wadi al-Qamar neighborhood.

Reuters could not independently verify this claim. Titan Cement says the plant’s emissions are within legal limits and plans to reduce its coal consumption in coming years.

Like many cement manufacturers in Egypt and North Africa, the factory uses imported coal to fuel its kilns. Lately, a growing share of the region’s coal comes from the United States, according to U.S. export data.

Fossil fuel exports have been a hot topic at the United Nations climate conference in Baku this year, with activists and delegates from some climate-vulnerable countries saying nations should be held accountable for the pollution they cause. they send abroad – often to poor developing countries – in the form of oil, gas and coal. Some are seeking to put the question of how to achieve this on the agenda of upcoming climate summits.

A landmark agreement reached in Paris in 2015 to combat climate change requires countries to set targets and report progress in reducing national levels of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming . But it imposes no such requirements for emissions generated by the fossil fuels they drill, extract and ship elsewhere.

This has allowed countries like the United States, Norway, Australia and others to say they are making progress toward international climate goals while producing and exporting fossil fuels at a breakneck pace, Bill Hare said , co-founder of Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific organization. project that tracks government climate action.

“Most of these fossil fuel exporting countries can do well with their national climate action,” he said on the sidelines of the COP29 conference in Baku this week. “Their exported emissions are someone else’s problem.”

U.S. exports of fossil fuels – including coal, oil, gas and refined fuels – resulted in emissions of more than 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in other countries in 2022, according to a calculation by Climate Action Tracker and verified by Reuters using data from the International Energy Agency. That’s equivalent to about a third of U.S. domestic emissions, the data shows.

A years-long drilling boom has made the United States the world’s top oil and gas producer, while strong demand has boosted its coal exports for four straight years, according to Energy Information Administration data (EIA) of the United States.

Asked how Washington balances its climate ambitions with its fossil fuel production and exports, President Joe Biden’s climate adviser Ali Zaidi said strong energy production is needed to maintain consumer prices low during the transition to cleaner fuels.

“I don’t think there is social acceptance for a decarbonization program that puts upward pressure on prices for retail consumers in the market,” Zaidi told Reuters.

New President Donald Trump, a climate change skeptic, has said he wants to further increase domestic production of fossil fuels.

For other producers, greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel exports sometimes exceed domestic emissions, Climate Action Tracker said.

This was true for Norway, Australia and Canada in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available for all countries analyzed. Reuters was granted exclusive access to the calculations.

Norway’s Ministry of Climate and Environment said it was up to other countries to manage their own carbon footprints.

“Each country is responsible for reducing its own emissions,” the ministry said in a statement to Reuters.

Officials from the environment and climate ministries of Canada and Australia had no comment.

Addressing the summit in Azerbaijan, host President Ilham Aliyev accused some Western politicians of double standards for lecturing his government over its use of oil and gas, saying: “They had better look at themselves.”

CEMENTERS AND BRICKS

Most US gas exports now go to European countries seeking to reduce their dependence on Russia, while China has become a major buyer of US crude and coal, according to figures from the EIA. However, the largest growth market for coal in the United States is North Africa.

U.S. coal mines exported about 52.5 million short tons globally in the first half of 2024, up nearly 7% from the same period last year, the data shows.

Much of this increase is due to Egyptian and Moroccan cement and brick kilns, which together absorbed more than 5 million short tons during the period, the EIA said in a recent report.

“These customers value the high calorific value of U.S. thermal coal, which makes their manufacturing operations more efficient,” the report said.

Meanwhile, domestic coal consumption in the United States has declined, as cheap natural gas and subsidies for renewable energy, such as solar and wind, force the closure of coal-fired power plants, prolonging a drop in greenhouse gas emissions of more than 15 years.

Egypt’s cement industry has depended on imported coal for nearly a decade as persistent natural gas shortages have forced many factories to seek alternatives, said Ahmed Shireen Korayem, vice president and board member. of the Arab Union for Cement and Building Materials, a regional industry body. .

The United States is Egypt’s largest supplier, accounting for 3.1 million of the 6.6 million tons of coal imported this year, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group.

Russia supplied most of the rest, 2.1 million tonnes. His environment ministry referred questions to the foreign ministry, which had no immediate comment.

Campaigners say the Egyptian government’s decision in 2015 to lift a long-standing ban on coal imports to support an industry central to its economic development plans is damaging the environment and the health of communities like Wadi al -Qamar.

Using data from the Alexandria power plant’s emissions monitoring system, researchers from Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, Cairo University and the Ministry of the Environment simulated the dispersion of polluting dust and toxic gases between 2014 and 2020.

The study, published in the Journal of Environmental Health Science and Engineering in 2022, concluded that a shift from using natural gas to coal as the dominant fuel led to increased emissions and total suspended particulate matter (TSP) concentrations. , nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide. However, the concentrations were mostly within legal limits.

Egypt’s greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels increased by more than a fifth in the decade ending in 2022, reaching 263 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, data from the Global Carbon Budget, a project led by the British University of Exeter.

Most of these emissions came from gas and oil, which remain Egypt’s main energy sources. Coal represented 3.4% of the 2022 total, or 9 million tonnes.

The government has committed in 2021 to phasing out the use of coal and has asked companies that use it to introduce more renewable sources into their energy mix. But Heba Maatouk, a spokesperson for Egypt’s Environment Ministry, said the supply of alternatives was insufficient, such as waste-derived fuel (RDF) made from combustible waste.

“If companies cannot get RDF, they will not stop operations and will use coal to avoid losses,” Maatouk told Reuters.

LEGAL BATTLES

Decarbonizing the cement industry is a challenge, particularly in poorer developing countries like Egypt, because it requires large amounts of energy and technologies to limit atmospheric emissions are expensive .

In his speech at COP29 last week, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said his country’s plans to increase renewable energy to 42% of its electricity mix by 2030 depended on foreign support.

Residents of the Wadi al-Qamar neighborhood are engaged in a protracted legal battle with the Alexandria cement company, APCC, and have filed several lawsuits, said Hoda Nasrallah, lawyer for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).

In 2016, community members supported by EIPR asked an administrative court in Alexandria to overturn amendments to the country’s environmental regulations that allow heavy industries to use coal for health and environmental reasons , according to the rights group.

APCC officials did not respond to a request for comment made through a legal representative.

Titan Cement confirmed that the plant sources its coal from the United States, but did not provide further details.

In a statement released by Lydia Yannakopoulou, group communications director, the company said the factory had not violated any laws, that it had invested 40 million euros in pollution control since 2010 and that it planned to reduce its use of coal in the coming years. this accelerates the use of alternatives.

She said a court-appointed expert committee from Alexandria University concluded that there were no environmental violations resulting from the company’s emissions or operational processes, and that the emissions were within legal limits.

Nasrallah said lawyers representing the community believe the committee was led by a company employee and have taken their case to Egypt’s highest administrative court in Cairo.

Neither side provided a copy of the committee’s report and Reuters could not independently verify their claims.

A decision in the case is expected in December.

Meanwhile, frustration is mounting among nearby residents, like Hisham al-Akary, who says his family has lived in Wadi al-Qamar for generations and cannot afford to move.

“This factory should not be here,” he told Reuters. “We should stay and they should go.” REUTERS