WHATEVER we say or do, they will burn the coal.

Neither preaching nor politics will stop the mining and burning. Furnaces will be stoked, hydrogen molecules will ignite and millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide will be released as China and India burn the fuel that lies under their feet.

This simple truth, which stands out like a sore thumb from any book of energy statistics, is ignored by our Government, which has turned the pursuit of carbon-free energy into a moral crusade. Yesterday, after years of prevarication, the Prime Minister’s energy review backed the construction of nuclear reactors to replace ageing plant soon to be decommissioned. No more pandering to the green lobby (the Cabinet’s own Greens were sacked or sidelined), because Tony Blair has belatedly discovered a gaping hole in the nation’s future power supply which cannot otherwise be filled except by fossil fuels.

There will be lots more windmills and more nukes, because the Government believes reducing carbon is a moral issue, like binge drinking. This absolutist view is shared by few nations and acted on by none, bar one. Britain was alone in imposing onerous carbon limits on industry in the EU’s carbon trading scheme. Most of Europe was lenient, setting easy targets for emission reduction, and as a result the price of a carbon permit fell sharply — the cost of pollution fell.

What happened? The price mechanism came into operation. Britain’s power generators looked at the price of coal — cheap. They looked at the price of carbon permits — cheap. The price of gas — expensive. Power companies stuffed their coal-burning generators to the brim, earning a mint from the widening “dark spread”, the margin between the cost of coal and the price of a kilowatt of power.

Power companies everywhere are looking at the fattening “dark spread” and comparing it to the thinner “spark spread” and “quark spread”, respectively the margins from gas or nuclear power generation.

Global coal consumption rose by 5 per cent in 2005, a year in which the overall rate of growth in energy consumption declined from 4.4 per cent to 2.7 per cent, according to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy. More coal means more carbon and global emissions rose 3 per cent, higher than the rate of energy use.

Oil and gas are dear, so the world is looking for a cheap burn and the price mechanism, always reliable, is pointing to coal. There is an awful lot of it about — 155 years of proven coal reserves compared with 41 years of oil and 65 years of gas at current consumption rates.

How can we persuade power generators not to burn the naughty, carbon-rich but inexpensive fuel? In the absence of an outright ban on coal, there must be a price disincentive that makes virginal windmills, and whizzy atoms look a bit less the Rolls-Royce option. We fall back on emissions trading, but is the rest of Europe in the mood for expensive power? Where is our Government’s strategy to persuade the entire world that coal is bad?

Moreover, the coal is exactly where we need it most. It is not owned by troublesome sheikhs but by Australians and South Africans. Most of the world’s coal is owned by by the biggest consumer; America has 27 per cent of the known coal deposits, some 240 years’ worth.

And here is the final rub. China has 13 per cent of the world’s coal and India 10 per cent. They scour the world for oil and gas, having little of their own. Both nations have a burgeoning requirement for fuel; India suffers a massive power deficit which will be satisfied, in large part, by burning coal in new power stations.

What is to be done? There is emerging technology, still expensive, to extract clean fuels from coal. But, we cannot ask these nations not to burn coal, not to light their homes, not to become affluent, urban consumers like us. Morally, politically, rationally, it is not a sustainable argument.

There was a time when Britain had a useful, instead of a preachy role in the world. It was at the dawn of nuclear power when Calder Hall, the first commercial reactor, was commissioned in 1956. Nuclear engineering has suffered since, banished by ideologues and buried in economic decline. It is affluent, wealthy countries that clean up the environment and develop new energy technologies. There is an easy way to emit less carbon — become poor.

carl.mortished@thetimes.co.uk

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