Sierra Club Resisting Coal at Oyu Tolgoi

There have been a series of excellent posts on coal power production at Oyu Tolgoi at the Sierra Club blog.

One focuses on the idea that the World Bank would provide funding for Oyu Tolgoi. As the authors explain in a detailed memo of eight pages length, coal at Oyu Tolgoi is not compatible with various World Bank standards.

With the World Bank explaining in a recent report that global warming is a serious problem, they should not consider giving one cent to Oyu Tolgoi before that project shelves its irresponsible plans for yet another coal plant and replaces them with large scale renewable capacity.

Another post is critical of the American Export Import Bank for considering funding Oyu Tolgoi.

One problem I have with their discussion of the power situation at Oyu Tolgoi is that they read the Investment Agreement to require building a coal power plant. Actually I think that clearly Oyu Tolgoi has the right under clause 7.5 to build “supplemental renewable energy sources”.

7.5 The Investor has the right to use or develop supplemental power from renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, geothermal and the like.” (Emphasis mine).

If so inclined, they could build wind and solar, including CSP for 24 hour supply, and use the Mongolian grid only as backup.