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Australia may be the worlds largest exporter of coal, sending out 388 million tons in 2015, but China’s production of coal the same year was 3,747 million tons — nearly ten times as much, and nearly half of global coal production. But the Chinese coal boom is turning. David Archibald describes the geopolitical ramifications. For me, the next question is what stops China doing nukes? — Jo
PS: There is a rumor that Australia has only 4-5 days of fuel stocks today, and is especially low on aviation fuel. Anyone with info, please comment or email joanne AT this site.
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Here is what’s holding back China’s plans for world domination
Guest post By David Archibald
One of the reasons that China produces the world’s cheapest solar panels, for example, is because it has some of the world’s cheapest coal-fired power
There is no doubt that China wants to subjugate Asia, echoing Japan’s role during World War II. For those who think China’s economy might overtake the United States economy, and thus make China a more formidable adversary, this article aims to provide detail on China’s main constraint in that ambition: that its domestic coal production is near its peak […]
The situation with our most hated energy asset
Australia’s big four banks are fighting over themselves to turn down the chance to profit from coal loans and tell the world. Months ago, Westpac went on a low-coal diet, declaring like a kind of vegan-keto-banker that they won’t consider a loan unless the coal mined has at least 6,300 kilocalories per kilogram. Presumably they will lose weight, or at least lighten up by a few shareholders. Last week our National Australia Bank announced they are waiting for the carbon capture fairy to conquer some laws of chemistry and economics before they finance coal mines again. (Though they limit themselves to spurning only new customers and “thermal coal” in a kind of have-cake-eat-half-the-cake policy.)
But while the small-fish Australian banks advertise their doogooder star status, financial institutions in Canada are putting $2.9 billion towards building new coal plants overseas. And in the last three years, Chinese banks have casually smashed $630 billion dollars into coal. (Notably, even the Chinese don’t want to put money into Adani coal in Australia, the political environment here is that bad.)
The rest of the world is definitely not watching the Australian Banks. Global coal consumption has […]
Get excited everyone — the South Pacific Island of Nuie, with a population of 1,625 people has vowed not to build a coal plant. The nation is so small it is not even a member of the UN. This champion of the move away from coal is 98% powered by diesel. Everybody Cheer!
Powering Past Coal Alliance: 20 countries sign up to phase out coal power by 2030
Twenty countries including Britain, Canada and New Zealand have joined an international alliance to phase out coal from power generation before 2030.
The list includes none of the top 15 coal producers in the world. It’s non-binding. Nearly all the countries that have signed up to “Power Past Coal” are already powered by hydro, gas, nuclear or some combination of renewables (with interconnector back up). The Marshall Islands are powered by almost 100% diesel, with a hint of coconut oil. Luxembourg barely even generates electricity — importing 98% from other countries. And 68% of the people in Angola don’t even have access to electricity. It shouldn’t be too hard to get to fifty countries to sign this if they offer a free conference dinner to half the South Pacific, Central […]
Funny things happening today in Australia:
Australians are cutting back on Fruit and Veges to pay electricity bills:
Since eating raw fruit and vege is associated with lower mortality, efforts to stop people dying of climate change in 2100 may be killing people today:
Australians are cutting back on basic things like fresh fruit and vegies in order to keep the lights on with the National Debt Helpline taking 14,000 calls in September — a record for the month, and up 14 per cent on the same time last year.
Dying stranded coal plant increases in value by 73,000% in 2 years:
The NSW government sold Vale Point power for $1m two years ago. It’s now valued at $730m:
In November 2015, the NSW Government offloaded Vales Point Power Station — an old, polluting coal-fired plant on the shores of Lake Macquarie — for $1 million.
Last week,… Sunset Power quietly released its latest financial reports — revaluing the Vales Point Power Plant at a cool $730 million.
Over the past year, Vale Points’ owners gained $380 million from electricity sales from the power station, compared to $270 million for energy generated […]
The cost of Going Green, The Australian, Cover, September 1, 2017.
The Australian calculates the total bill will be in the order of $60b for green electricity.
It’s not like we could have done something better with that.
Read it all (if you can), then write to your MP and Senator. Ask why — if they are serious about helping reduce CO2 — we don’t have a USC coal plant like so many other countries, and why we don’t have nuclear power. Then ask why, if they are concerned about the poor, about health, about education, we are wasting $60b dollars to try to change the weather in 2100 that we could be spending on these critical areas right now?
Taxpayers hit with a $60bn power bill
The Australian, Adam Creighton
Taxpayers will have paid more than $60 billion through federal renewable energy subsidies by 2030, about twice what the crumbling car industry received over 15 years and enough to build about 10 large nuclear reactors.
The government’s large and small-scale renewable energy targets, which will compel energy retailers to buy 33 terawatt hours of wind, solar and hydro energy by 2030, will […]
“End-Coal” Global Coal Tracker does a magnificent job of showing how essential coal is around the world, and which countries are pathetically backwards in developing new coal plants. It’s probably not what the “CoalSwarm” team was hoping to achieve, but this map is a real asset to those of us who want to show how tiny Australia’s coal fired assets are compared to the rest of the world. The site itself is a fancy-pants high gloss major database and website that also shows how much money is in the “anti-coal” movement. Oh, that skeptics should have even 2% of these funds. Heffa Schücking, the director of Urgewald, which created the maps, calls it a “cycle of coal dependency”. Normal people call it “freedom and wealth”.
Chinese companies build coal plants — NY Times
These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are […]
TonyFromOz reports that the first generator at Hazelwood Power Station has stopped after 53 years of operation.
If only the Victorian government saw value in keeping an old cheap power generator going. Marvel that even though this plant can sell wholesale electricity at 3 or 4 cents per KWhr it is unable to make a profit. There is no free market in electricity in Australia, only the illusion of it. Hands up who thinks a million households would buy direct from Hazelwood and keep it going, if there was no government intervention to stop them? — Jo
Hazelwood Power Station, closes, March 2017. Photo David Maddison.
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Hazelwood Update – The shutdown has started
At 1.51AM Monday 27th March, Unit 8 was the first Unit at Hazelwood to shut down. It reduced power at around 3.45PM on Sunday afternoon from around 170MW to between 128MW and 134MW, trying vainly to stay operational for as long as possible. At 11.05PM Sunday night, power started falling even more, leading me to believe it was starting the shutdown process, which took almost three hours. Power fell off over the next almost three hours and finally, it stopped […]
Last days before Hazelwood shuts down.
Robert Gottleibsen in The Australian a couple of days ago has investigated our energy crisis, and discovered our old centralized grid design is quite likely to fall over next summer in an incredibly expensive way. It’s nice that he did some research and even talked to engineers:
The looming crisis is much worse than I expected. Three state governments, Victoria NSW and South Australia, have vandalised our total energy system. The Premiers of each state clearly had no idea what they were doing and did not sit down with top engineers outside the government advisers to work out the best way to achieve their objectives — whether that be an increase in renewables or gas restrictions.
He warns that it is potentially criminal:
I have been alerted that in the 1995 Federal Criminal Code under Section 137.1 in Chapter 7 there is a section entitled ‘Good administration of government’.
Me? I remain a cynic (not that I’m a lawyer). The legislation has been there since 1995, threatens 12 months in prison for “misleading information”. It can’t be this simple.
Still it would be good if politicians were scared into doing […]
Three days to go: The Hazelwood shut down begins
The situation in Australia right now:
The total fossil fuel output compared to total wind power generation, NEM, Australian electricity market, 21 March 2017
One old coal plant makes more electricity than all the wind farms
Guest Post by TonyfromOZ and Jo Nova
I’ve been watching the output of all eight generators at Hazelwood closely all month and comparing it to the total wind farm generation across the National Electricity Market (NEM). The old warhorse is a remarkable engineering and economic success.
I’ve kept a total of the power output each day from midnight to midnight and a running cumulative total. So far, the running total output from Hazelwood has always stayed ahead of the total from wind farms. So this 53 year old coal fired plant that is being shut down next week has produced more energy than the 43 wind plants on the National Energy Market. Even if we could store the energy from the wind farms, it still doesn’t add up to the same as one very ancient coal plant. The shut down starts in three days time on Friday March 24th.
Over […]
Japan will use Australian coal to build 45 modern coal fired plants:
Japan is the largest overseas market for Australian coal producers, taking more than a third of all exports.
Why coal? It’s cheaper than gas:
Tom O’Sullivan, a Tokyo based energy consultant with Mathyos Global Advisory, said in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, Japan started importing more liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Australia.
But he said the move to more coal fired power was because coal was cheaper than LNG, and the energy security was priority for the government.
The new ultra super critical coal plants burn hotter and are more efficient (hence, high energy, low emissions = HELE).
Finally, after blackouts and scandalously high electricity bills, Malcolm Turnbull is just starting to float the idea of building, maybe, one. China has them, even Indonesia will get one before us.
Japan needs to import 95% of its energy. Australia is the largest exporter of coal in the world, and has the largest known uranium resources in the world, but we voluntarily wear a hair shirt to appease GAIA. We sacrifice our cheap energy advantage for fear that loud ill-mannered […]
Back in 2011 Anton Lang, Tony Cox, and I wrote here about why Australia would be better off with super critical hot coal generators (which China already uses, and which even Indonesia will get before us). Not only do we get cheap reliable power, but it would be a better way to reduce our emissions (if we want to pretend to change the weather).
Now, finally, in 2017 Malcolm Turnbull is saying the same thing as the skeptics he mocked years ago. This is how the “climate meme” dies, one unacknowledged step at a time. Gradually all the skeptical positions get picked up, years later and after burning billions at the altar of “climate control”. This is a big win for skeptics, but don’t expect Turnbull or the ABC to be honest enough to say so. This marks a major turning point in the discussion about coal in Australia which has mostly never got past the “coal is dying” and the “stranded assets” inanity which implied that coal has no future and our massive coal reserves were useless instead of being our major export industry.
Last week Tony Abbott, former PM, called for stop to subsidies for wind power – […]
Indonesia might be bigger than you thought. | Image credit: Overlaymaps
Time to pay attention to the fourth largest population in the world.
You might have reused some shopping bags to save the planet but two hundred million people quietly doubled their coal use:
Indonesia’s coal consumption remains high: BP
The BP Statistical Review 2016 revealed on Wednesday that Indonesia’s coal consumption had doubled since 2010. Last year, coal became the country’s dominant source of fuel, accounting for 41 percent of total energy consumption.
Studies show coal consumption remains popular in Indonesia despite its damaging environmental impacts. The government has committed to an ambitious 35,000 megawatt electricity program, in which coal-fueled power plants will still make up the majority of electricity generation, at around 50 percent.
As coal got cheap, Indonesia exported less and used more of it domestically.
They don’t seem to following the IPCC’s plan.
Indonesia will soon have more advanced coal fired power stations than Australia:
Japan’s major conglomerate Itochu Corporation and one of world’s major electricity company, Electric Power Development Co. Ltd (J. Power), have promised to fully support the construction of the coal-fired Batang power plant […]
Good news. India plans to add more fertilizer to the global air which will help feed the world. There is no charge.
India will become the world’s number 2 miner of coal by 2020, overtaking the US. There are plans to ramp up from mining 634 million tons to 1.5 billion metric tons by 2020. That’s only 3 years away. China’s total coal use doesn’t even fit on this graph. As best as anyone can guess, China uses 3.7 billion ton each year.
How’s that ground breaking, world leading Paris agreement going?
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Australia is the worlds largest coal exporter but our total exports of coal in 2014/15 were a tiny 393Mt (of both thermal and metallurgical coal). I’ve marked that in blue on the graph. We are only a large exporter because everyone else keeps the coal for their own use.
More mining of India’s coal, Fills another significant role, That of plant-food increase, By CO2 release, Which should really be all mankind’s goal.
— Ruairi
h/t to GWPF
9.8 out of 10 based on 51 ratings
The Guardian are in hot pursuit of the nickel and dime Coal-Yeti.
Analysis of Peabody Energy court documents show company backed trade groups, lobbyists and thinktanks dubbed ‘heart and soul of climate denial’
The thing is, if Peabody was keeping the heart and soul of climate denial alive, it is now flat broke — it’s over for climate denial. No heart. No soul. Denial is dead! But can anyone spot the difference… ?
Poor Guardian schmucks. Peabody were funding people who write what they believe, so Peabody came and went and the same people are still writing what they believe. If climate skeptics were in it for the money, they’d be alarmists.
Yes, Do. Lets talk about the Funding If climate skeptics were in it for the money, they’d be alarmists.
Suzanne Goldenberg and Helena Bengtsson repeat all the usual sacred incantations completely blind to the real money. At one point they are so stuck for “big money” they whip out a $10,000 figure, and in an article about Peabody, that’s not even from Peabody, but from Arch Coal. General Electric make $20 billion a year in profits from “renewables” — when is The Guardian going to expose […]
Get a load of this. China has been adding a new idle coal fired plant nearly every week. It is building 368 coal fired plants and planning a further 803. The Greens think the Chinese have over capitalized, made a bubble, and have built a bunch of white elephants (maybe they have). But Germany has crippled its electrical generators in order to make the weather cooler, and pays exorbitant prices per kilowatt hour that are driving businesses overseas. Merkel is still trying to get solar power to work in a land where the only thing that will make the current panels economic is if the Earth changes its orbital tilt.
Well say hello to the savvy Chinese investors who may be able to solve both problems. It seems hard to believe but all that surplus energy might just find its way to Germany. With new ultra hot coal power there is talk they can produce electricity so incredibly cheap they can send it on ultra high voltage lines all the way to Berlin. Barking? They’ll probably earn carbon credits for doing it too.
The Times UK
Coal’s future burns bright — Graham Lloyd
Greenpeace likes to […]
A new MIT report suggests a better way to use coal in power-stations and potentially cut CO2 emissions by 50%. The process involves gasifying coal and producing electricity in one process at the same site. The coal only has to be heated once, and the electricity comes from a fuel cell, not a fire — it’s a chemical reaction across a membrane. The output is potentially much more efficient, and makes no ash. The researchers argue we could get twice as much electricity for each ton of coal burned. Currently coal fired power pulls out 30% of the chemical energy in coal, but coupling these two processes might increase it to 55-60%.
This report is based on simulations, but the separate processes are already well developed and running. The next step would be a fully functioning pilot plant to put the two together and test the idea. If there was the political will it could be done in a few years. There probably won’t be.
The Greens of course will hate the idea because the Evil-Factor of coal is near 100%.
In the eco-collectivist-world, cutting “carbon” is important, but apparently not as important as propping up a dependent lobby group […]
Spot the contradictions. Oxfam want us to believe we can be “coal free” in France, the UK and Italy by 2023. Then they tell us that most of these richest of rich nations are already trying and failing to do that. They are using more coal.
Then there is a nifty graph below, which seems to suggest that in these same nations solar is cheaper than coal. If solar is so cheap then, we don’t need any schemes, markets or subsidies. Right?
Welcome to reality — even the richest greenest nations need more coal:
Five of the world’s seven richest countries have increased their coal use in the last five years despite demanding that poor countries slash their carbon emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change, new research shows.
Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan and France together burned 16% more coal in 2013 than 2009 and are planning to further increase construction of coal-fired power stations. Only the US and Canada of the G7 countries meeting on Monday in Berlin have reduced coal consumption since the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.
The US has reduced its coal consumption by 8% largely because of fracking for shale […]
Why launch a $15 billion dollar tax? Forget any scientific reason; let’s do it so people overseas don’t laugh at us. This is as good as the reasoning gets. Have you got a Nobel? You too, could waffle on about hobbling our economy in the quest for international popularity.
Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty says Australia is being seen internationally as “public enemy number one” on climate change
“Australia is being regarded as public enemy number one,” said Professor Doherty, who won the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine in 1996.
The evidence Australia is seen as a public enemy?
“That’s a statement that’s been made to me by a couple of people – so that’s obviously a kind of buzz that’s going around the climate change community.”
Not exactly a large poll or a mass survey, but it impressed Dan Harrison, the Sydney Morning Herald and perhaps Ben Cubby (Environment Editor) too. Who needs evidence when you have the right “buzz”? Baseless ramblings are good to go. File that rant under “Health and Indigenous Affairs” I suppose. It sure isn’t science.
The SMH could interview other Nobel Prize winners who use evidence and reason […]
Oops. Who hates “the environment”? Green lobbyists keep revealing how little they care. Friends of the Earth want to categorically rule out one of the most cost effective ways to reduce our carbon emissions. New supercritical hot burning coal plants can reduce emissions by an amazing 15%. But Friends of the Earth and The Guardian hate coal more than they care about CO2.
The green climate fund (GCF) refused an explicit ban on fossil fuel projects at the contentious meeting in Songdo, South Korea, last week.
“It’s like a torture convention that doesn’t forbid torture,” said Karen Orenstein, a campaigner for Friends of the Earth US who was at the meeting. “Honestly it should be a no-brainer at this point.” — The Guardian
Poor old solar and wind power are so useless that the debate is about whether they achieve any reductions at all. Their intermittent power means some kind of back-up base load power source has to run on standby to pick up the pieces when they collapse. The more wind power you have, the less CO2 you save. Solar Power provides “cheaper” electricity to the rich at the expense of everyone else, and potentially […]
People who have no cheap electricity burn wood or coal inside their homes to make dinner and stay warm. The smoke produces real pollution (as opposed to the fake kind which feeds plants). In India, some homes have pollution levels “three times higher than a typical London street”. Not surprisingly, living in smoke does not work out well for lungs and hearts. “Estimates suggest that household air pollution killed 3·5 to 4 million people in 2010. “
We can argue about the numbers and whether they are exaggerated, but there’s no doubt that millions of people would lead better lives if they had access to cheap electricity, which in practical terms means coal-fired power. In Niger, Africa, 17 million people use less electricity than Dubbo, NSW, a town of 40,000.
Where are the Greens? Children in poverty are suffering from lung damage now. The Greens priority is to spend billions to stop them dying in 2100 from seas rising at 1mm a year. How many people does expensive electricity kill? — Jo
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Household air pollution puts more than one in three people worldwide at risk of ill health, early death 8.9 out of 10 based on 61 ratings […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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