Do we really need coal?

A report published today by Poyry Energy suggests that we don't.

I'm not sure I believe them. A few reasons:
1) The report has been comissioned for WWF and Greenpeace. Greenpeace are opossed to coal regardless of how clean it is. WWF are taking the correct approach of "when CCS is being used it's fine".
2) The report assumes that the electricity this country will use will decline! This is the first report I have ever seen which makes this assumption! I was always taught that GDP has linked to electricity consumption (yes, I know that graph comes from an oil company, but I don't believe that they will have deliberately plotted it wrongly - you have to trust someone at some point it time).

For me, this assumption is enough to kill the report.

A question of scale

So, how hard will it be to reduce CO2 emissions? I'm pretty certain it will be difficult!

The problem is that to reduce demand everyone has got to make an effort. I'm out here in the states, and I spent yesterday cycling up the highway to downtown pittsburgh. Plenty of cars came whizzing by me.
Whilst I don't expect people to give up their cars I may, if I'm lucky, be changing attitudes, such that people don't automatically assume that it's imposible to cycle down that road - after all everyone who saw me can say that it isn't.

So back to my question - how do we change people's attitudes?

I'm not sure it's possible - that is to change them enough in a short enough space in time. I think that instead we need to supply peoples current demands in a more sustainable manner.
That will probably mean more electrification, taking demmand beyond that which can be met by renewables and nuclear.

That means fossil plants, and that means carbon capture and storage.