UN wants coal to stay in the ground

The federal government says coal will serve as an affordable, dependable energy source for decades to come. But this is at odds with the views of the UN, which in the lead-up to the New York climate summit warned that coal has no future in the world's energy mix.

"It is certainly within Australia's purview to decide how Australia is going to pursue its energy generation and energy growth," UN Climate Chief Christiana Figueres said.

"It is just a question of really thinking through very carefully what is in the best long-term interest of Australia and of the Australian population, making careful decisions that are informed both by today's reality of climate change impacts as well as tomorrow's but very soon reality of a low-carbon society."

The UN secretary-general's climate summit is the largest leaders' climate meeting since the 2009 Copenhagen summit, with more than 120 world leaders in attendance, including US President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

But Prime Minister Tony Abbott is absent from the summit, as are major emitters China and India.

Ms Figueres said she was not worried about China’s absence. "It is well known that China for one is taking this very seriously. We know China is investing heavily into renewable energy ... they are going from 70 gigawatts of wind to over 200 gigawatts of wind, which is two times as much as the entire European Union has," she said.

The UN has told the coal industry that most of the world's coal reserves should be left in the ground to avoid catastrophic global warming.

A report to be presented at the summit predicts China could hit peak thermal coal demand by 2016. The report, produced by the non-profit think tank Carbon Tracker, said this meant there should be a rethink of all green fields coal developments, including Australia's Galilee Basin.

The executive director of the UN's Environment Programme said the need to reduce fossil fuel emissions was one of the great "dilemmas" of the 21st century.

"There are countries that have oil, there are countries that have coal and there countries that have asbestos," Achim Steiner said. "At a certain point human wellbeing and our collective wellbeing and security becomes an overriding criterion.

"This is a question for which there is no simple answer ... but to simply ignore the problem and hope that someone can continue with business as usual because one happens to sit on a mountain of coal or on a great deal of oil I think is ultimately not going to be the answer."

Economist Nick Stern, a former UK adviser to the British government on climate change, last week helped release a report showing that investments to help fight climate change could also spur economic growth rather than slow it.

The former World Bank chief economist urged governments to abandon what he called an "artificial horse race" between economic growth and action to combat climate change.

"The challenge is to combine the two," he said. "That is the only sensible route."