New York announced plans Wednesday to sell off $5 billion in fossil fuel investments from city pension funds after suing for billions of dollars in damages from oil companies to help fund protection against climate change.

While other cities in Europe and the United States have already taken similar steps, New York hailed its move as significant as it is the biggest metropolis in the country. The city suffered billions of dollars of damage in Hurricane Sandy.

New York's $189 billion pension fund -- held for city employees such as police officers, teachers and firefighters -- currently has around $5 billion in securities of more than 190 fossil fuel companies, officials said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said staff will instruct fund trustees to start analyzing ways to divest responsibly from fossil fuel over the next five years, in a process that officials warned would not be easy and that would take time.

"New York City is standing up for future generations by becoming the first major US city to divest our pension funds from fossil fuels," de Blasio.

US President Donald Trump inflamed the world last year by announcing that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, setting off a crescendo of efforts by Democrat-run cities and states to shrink the country's carbon footprint.

A report issued at UN talks last November said those efforts would not fully counteract Trump's decision to reverse climate policies and promote fossil fuel use.

In December, the United States did not attend international climate talks in Paris, at which countries announced they were boosting investment in green energy and divesting from fossil fuels.

New York, home to 8.5 million residents and the US financial capital, is a bastion of opposition to Trump.

The city has filed a federal lawsuit seeking damages from BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell to help compensate its $20 billion plan to protect the city, economy and public services from the effects of climate change.

De Blasio drew comparisons between oil companies and the tobacco industry, which knowingly profited out of a habit they knew to be harmful.

- Courts 'not the answer' -

"New York City is taking on these five giants because they are the central actors, they are the first ones responsible for this crisis, and they should not get away with it anymore," de Blasio told reporters.

"As climate change continues to worsen, it's up to the fossil fuel companies whose greed put us in this position to shoulder the cost of making New York safer and more resilient," he added.

Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell issued statements calling the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions a global issue that required more sweeping action than lawsuits.

BP and ConocoPhillips declined to comment.

"Climate change is a complex societal challenge that should be addressed through sound government policy and cultural change to drive low-carbon choices for businesses and consumers, not by the courts," said a spokesperson for Shell.

Hurricane Sandy paralyzed New York in 2012, causing nine-foot (three-meter) floods across coastal New York and New Jersey, and an estimated $71 billion in damage.

A study published by researchers last October warned that rising sea levels from man-made climate change could prompt catastrophic flooding in New York as frequently as once every five years by 2030 to 2045.

Last month, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo also unveiled plans to divest state pension funds from fossil fuel investments.

In June 2016, the largest public pension fund in the US capital Washington said it had successfully purged its $6.4 billion fund of all direct holdings in fossil fuels.

Later that year, global movement DivestInvest said funds held by institutions and individuals committed to divesting from fossil fuel had reached $5.2 trillion.

Germans outraged as historic church makes way for coal mine
Frankfurt Am Main (AFP) Jan 10, 2018 - The demolition of a historic German church to clear the way for the expansion of an open-cast mine this week has outraged locals and environmentalists, as politicians moot giving up their own clean energy targets.

Built in large part by local people and consecrated in 1891, St Lambertus church in Immerath, North Rhine-Westphalia state, was ripped down by diggers' hydraulic arms on Monday and Tuesday, leaving a heap of rubble where the neo-Roman nave and twin towers once stood.

Police brought in reinforcements Monday to manage a crowd of protesters who held up the demolition for five hours, local newspaper Rheinische Post reported.

"Those who destroy culture destroy people too," a banner held up by Greenpeace demonstrators read.

Immerath and its church have been doomed since 2013, when Germany's constitutional court found that there was an overwhelming public interest in allowing energy firm RWE to expand its nearby Garzweiler open-cast brown coal mine.

Almost all the 900 villagers have long since quit their homes, among a total of 7,900 people from the region making way for the mine, while the Catholic church was deconsecrated in preparation for its destruction.

The demolition has drawn attention to the nation's mining of brown coal, as calls grow to reduce greenhouse emissions by ending use of the cheap but polluting fuel.

Germany has massively expanded renewable energy in recent years, part of its "energy transition" away from fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Environmentalists point out that at times of peak production energy firms now pay neighbouring countries to take surpluses generated from coal off their hands.

But power companies argue they need coal capacity as a stopgap for times when output from solar and wind is low.

Meanwhile, politicians are loath to impose an end to coal, an industry that still employed almost 20,000 miners in 2015 according to official figures.

As the towers fell in Immerath, talks between Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and their historic rivals the Social Democrats were getting underway on renewing a left-right "grand coalition" that has ruled since 2013.

One of the first proposals to leak from the talks was giving up Germany's 2020 goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent compared with 1990's level.

"Who is fighting for an exit from coal or a real reduction in CO2 emissions? No-one that I know of," prominent Greens party figure Robert Habeck told news agency DPA.

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French energy company EDF to replace coal in China
Washington (UPI) Jan 9, 2018
An energy service contract for a municipality in China means its residents won't have to use coal-fired options, French company EDF said Tuesday. A subsidiary of the French company two years ago took an 80 percent stake in UPC Asia Wind Manage, which runs wind power plants in the second-largest economy. Its work covers four wind power plants with a net capacity of 66 megawatts and EDF h ... read more

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