Climate Change > Australia's Coal Mines Booming; Russia to Supply India With More Coal; EV Fire Risks Not Being Addressed

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Australia is making the most out of the COAL BOOM

16 Oct, 2021 06:49

©  Kelly Lacy / Pexels

Australia continues to back its coal industry as many Western nations have turned their back on the dirtiest fossil fuel, approving a third coal mine extension in a month and bolstering partnerships for long-term coal exports.

We already know the demand is there, with China requiring increasing coal to bridge its fuel demand gap, but Australia is one of the few remaining nations outside of Asia to continue to back coal as a major energy source. 

Earlier this month, Australia approved its third coal mine extension within a month. In September, Environment Minister Sussan Ley approved extensions for the Whitehaven Coal and Wollonggong Coal mines. The latest extension approval was for the Glencore Mangoola thermal coal mine in New South Wales, allowing it to continue production for eight more years, mining approximately 52 million tons of coal.

But it’s not just other countries that are putting pressure on Australia to join them in curbing its coal production. In May, a ruling from Australia’s high court encouraged the country’s environment minister to reconsider coal mine expansions due to the obligation the ministry has to the Australian childrens’ future, as well as the general impact of coal production and use on climate change. 

While environmental activists and international energy organizations are less than happy with Australia’s ongoing support for coal, many Australians back the decision to expand mines because of their contribution to the country’s employment. Around 400 workers are currently employed at Glencore, and the expansion will add 100 construction jobs.

Australia is the world’s biggest exporter of coal, with strong links to the Asian market. To date, Australia has made no pledge to reduce carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050, unlike many of its Western counterparts. Many countries across Europe and North America have vowed to rapidly reduce carbon emissions, an aim that is expected to be reinforced in the upcoming COP26 climate summit in Glasgow this month, which Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison will attend. 

However, shortly after the announcement of the third expansion project, Australia’s resources minister proposed the establishment of a state-run $180-billion lending option for the coal industry, with the stipulation that borrowers support a net-zero carbon emissions target. This strategy comes as banks and insurers become less willing to lend to the dying coal sector. 

Australia’s dependence on coal is not surprising considering its close proximity to the Asian market, where coal demand remains high. Several Asian countries, most notably China and India with their ever-expanding populations, continue to rely on coal, as well as oil and gas, to meet their national energy demand. 

“While China unambiguously needs as much coal as it can get its hands on to avert a [fourth-quarter] slowdown due to the tyranny of rolling power shortages, geopolitical tensions with Australia have waylaid the most convenient source of high-calorific coal from Down Under,” Vishnu Varathan, head of economics and strategy for Asia and Oceania treasury department at Mizuho, stated of China’s reliance on coal imports.

However, in late 2020, China ended its coal imports from Australia following difficult trade relations, namely Australia’s support for an international inquiry into China’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic. Coal is Australia’s third-largest export to China, a country that accounts for 32.6% of all Australian exports, with Australia exporting more to China than it imports. 

After reportedly telling utilities and steel mills to stop all Australian coal imports, China began to import its coal from regional exporters Indonesia, Mongolia, and Russia. India has apparently been buying discounted coal that was left stranded in Chinese customs following the falling out between China and Australia. In recent months, Indian cement makers and sponge iron plants have sought to boost supplies with this low-cost option. 

The Chinese stockpile of Australian coal, and its willingness to sell the supply at a discount, suggests the dedication it had to cutting trade ties with Australia. However, the energy crisis experienced in recent months has finally proved too much for China to continue holding a grudge. Fuel shortages and high energy costs have led the Chinese government to resume Australian coal imports. This month, China released Australian coal from bonded warehouses in addition to receiving 450,000 tons of Australian coal cargoes at the beginning of the month.

During the time that China refused imports, Australia did not just simply wait for China to come running back, rather it fostered its relationship with India. Australia held its first joint working group meeting on coal and mines with India this September to encourage greater participation in Australia’s ongoing coal production. Australia identifies India as a key market for some of its lower-grade coal, with prices significantly undercutting those of the premium coal products imported by China.

With little commitment to net-zero aims, ongoing support for coal plant expansion projects despite a high court interjection, and ongoing trade links with high-demand countries across Asia, it seems unlikely that Australia will curb its coal production or make it more carbon-friendly any time soon, despite international pressure to do so.  

Russia to boost coal supplies to India amid global power crunch

17 Oct, 2021 13:33

© Sputnik / Aleksandr Kryazhev

Russia’s Energy Ministry signed an agreement this week with India’s Steel Industry Ministry aimed at increasing Russian coking coal supply to India to 40 million tons per year.

The deal was inked at the Russian Energy Week Forum, held from October 13-15 in Moscow.

According to Russian Energy Minister Nikolay Shulginov, Russia currently supplies around eight million tons of all types of coal to the South Asian country.

The agreement is also meant to stimulate enterprises in Russia and India in the development of coal deposits, the development of coal logistics and infrastructure, the promotion of R&D in production, as well as education and training for the coal industry.

The world’s third-largest coal importer, India, is currently struggling with coal shortages. Coal accounts for around 70% of the nation’s electricity generation. Most of India’s coal-fired power plants have critically low levels of inventory amid growing electricity demand.

A widening gap between soaring international and domestic coal prices has also seen imports decline sharply in recent months.

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Moving to a green economy at the pace of some countries is absurdly reckless. 

‘Naive is an understatement’: German safety official tells RT

that risk of electric vehicle fires is ‘completely unaddressed’

24 Oct, 2021 17:33

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire at a bus depot in Stuttgart, Germany, September 30, 2021 © AFP / Andreas Rosar

It's hard to see how this is improving air quality

A series of fires involving electric buses is calling into question Germany’s reliance on these zero-emissions vehicles. “The risk of these fires,” safety regulator Heinrich Duepmann told RT, “is completely unaddressed.”

Europe is experiencing a green transport boom. Sales have quadrupled since 2018, and one in every ten new vehicles sold on the continent is now fully electric, a share that rises to four in ten when hybrid vehicles are taken into account. In Germany, where the Greens are in talks about joining a coalition government, the number of electric buses doubled last year compared to 2019.

The switchover from diesel to electricity has not been entirely smooth. Three bus depots were gutted by fire this year alone, with the most recent in Stuttgart last month destroying 25 buses and sending a column of smoke towering over the city.

The fires prompted the cities of Munich and Stuttgart to suspend use of these battery-powered buses, and Heinrich Duepmann of Germany’s Electricity Consumer Protection Association told RT that he shares their concerns ​​– not just about buses, but electric vehicles in general.

“The risk of these fires, including in other locations such as bicycle basements or large apartment blocks, is completely unaddressed,” he said. “Also, insurance companies are not yet tackling the issue.”

The lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles can catch fire if damaged, or in some cases during charging or spontaneously. Lithium burns ferociously on contact with air, and once ablaze, these fires can be extremely difficult to put out. While burning, lithium-ion batteries have been shown to emit toxic quantities of fluoride gas.

Aside from the fire risk, Deupmann is also concerned that as private electric vehicles become more popular, the country’s electricity infrastructure is “completely undeveloped” to facilitate widespread fast charging.

“People have been too naive about this,” he said, adding that “naive is an understatement.”

Environmental Threats Remote and Invisible Meant to Create Fear - Patrick Moore

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Environmental Threats Based on Invisible, Remote Subjects to Create Fear:

Greenpeace Co-founder

BY ISAAC TEO

May 22, 2021 Updated: May 23, 2021

The co-founder of Greenpeace says in his new book that alleged environmental catastrophes and threats are based on subjects that are either invisible or extremely remote in order to create fear, forcing people to rely on experts to tell them the truth.

“It dawned on me that the great majority of scare stories about the present and future state of the planet, and humanity as a whole, are based on subjects that are either invisible, like CO2 and radiation, or extremely remote, like polar bears and coral reefs,” wrote Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, in his book titled “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom.”

“Thus, most people have no way of determining the truth of these claims of alleged catastrophes and doomsday threats. Instead, they must rely on the activists, the media, the politicians, and the scientists—all of whom have a very large financial and/or political stake in the subject—to tell them the truth.”

Moore, also a senior fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, said he left Greenpeace after 15 years when he realized the movement had taken “a sharp turn to the political left.”

During a webinar on May 20, he said the main purpose of writing the book was to show that those narratives are “just a big hoax.”

Language is manipulated to invoke negativity, fear, and compliance in order for proponents of environmental catastrophes to push their narratives, Moore said.

“A classic example of propaganda is ‘dirty oil,’” he noted. “That’s how we grow our food—in dirt. So what’s wrong with dirty? But they’re not using it to mean dirt as in soil. They’re using it to mean ‘dirty rotten scoundrel.’ In other words, it’s purely an epithet—a negative epithet.”

Moore said that kind of wording has nothing to do with scientific description or the actual quality of oil. Rather, it’s an example of a propaganda technique where a normal concept is merged with an undesirable idea in order to make something seem bad.

“Much of propaganda is about associating negative words with normal words, and therefore turning them into a negative,” he said.

“This welcomes the opportunity to invent narratives such as the claim that ‘CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels are causing climate emergency,’” he writes in his book.

But Moore said the amount of CO2 has been declining in the global atmosphere for at least half a billion years based on historical records.

In his testimony before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight in 2014, Moore argued that although there is some correlation, there is little evidence to support a direct causal relationship between CO2 and global temperature through the millennia.

“The fact that we had both higher temperatures and an ice age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they are today fundamentally contradicts the certainty that human-caused CO2 emissions are the main cause of global warming,” he testified at the time.

The book also addresses the issue of coral reefs reported to be dying allegedly due to climate change warming the oceans. Moore explains in the book that the most diverse coral reefs are found in the world’s warmest oceans, in a roughly triangular-shaped region in the western Pacific Ocean known as the Coral Triangle. The region extends from the Philippine Archipelago in the north to the Indonesia Archipelago in the south and extends east to the seas around the Solomon Islands.

The Coral Triangle has the world’s “highest biodiversity of coral, with more than 600 species, which is 76 percent of all coral species,” the book states. It adds that the region also has the “highest biodiversity of reef fish, with 2,000 species, which is 37 percent of all reef-fish species,” and is “home to six of the world’s seven species of marine turtles.”

“In other words, they found no evidence that there is anywhere in the world’s oceans that indicates a decline in species richness due to warmer ocean water,” Moore writes, referring to a research paper on global marine species diversity and the factors that influence higher or lower diversity.

“They found the opposite, that the warmest waters in the world have the highest species diversity for every taxonomic class of marine life.”

His book, “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom,” also seeks to dispel what Moore calls the “unified theory of scare stories.” They include the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific, which has a high concentration of microplastic debris and is said to be twice the size of Texas; polar bears being threatened with extinction due to climate change; and ocean acidification.

The book is published by Ecosense Environmental Inc. and is available on Amazon. (Click on Image).

Greenpeace Gets it Wrong, Again; Increased Prosperity Improves Ecosystems

Mark Milke
The Province Opinion Op-Ed

Tourists and Londoners along the Thames River. DHF/ZDS / Dinendra Haria/WENN

Economic growth — implicitly criticized — can and has damaged the environment. However, increasing prosperity, once a minimum threshold of subsistence income is reached, inevitably allows for improved ecosystems.

You may know this frightening if self-evident bit of advice: “Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.” The quote is ostensibly from Canada’s First Nations peoples (the Cree are often cited) but popularized by Greenpeace.

The point is clear enough: Anyone with sense should avoid killing the earth and/or their own future just to make a few bucks.

But most of life is not composed of such binary, either-or dramatic choices. You can fish, for example, just as some First Nations did 15,000 years ago or 15 minutes ago, without necessarily depleting fish stocks.

As with all of life, it is a question of balance. That also includes managing government lands (always more difficult than managing private property) so resources are not overused and depleted.

That noted, here is the other reality check on the romanticized quotation: Economic growth — implicitly criticized — can and has damaged the environment. However, increasing prosperity, once a minimum threshold of subsistence income is reached, inevitably allows for improved ecosystems.

For example, 140 years ago, London’s Thames River was a polluted, poisonous, dead body of water. When a passenger ship sunk in 1878 after a collision, at least some of the 600 passengers who died might have survived. The problem was that as some swam to shore they were overcome “by the noxious cocktail of pollution in the water,” was how the Daily Telegraph described it.

By 1957, the Thames was pronounced biologically dead. But after an intensive environmental program, as well as improved technology, it was revived, and as of 2010, when the Telegraph wrote its story, the river was home to 125 types of fish and more than 400 species of invertebrates. Herons and seals now frolic near Canary Wharf.

Ponder another example: In the 1950s and in subsequent decades, Los Angeles was choked by smog. Public demands coupled with technological advances (you need the second to realistically satisfy the first) meant air quality improved by the time I lived there briefly in the 1980s. The smog was still there, but Los Angeles air was far better than in previous decades. L.A. air quality has also steadily improved in the last three decades despite many more people who live and drive in the city and state.

Air quality in the Fraser Valley and Vancouver, British Columbia has improved remarkably in the past two decades as the Port of Vancouver installed huge electric outlets for ships to plug into when in port, rather than running their diesels continuously. 

Then there are trees. Forest cover around the world has been recovering for decades in every place where people have prospered under increasingly market-friendly economies. According to Human Progress, China, Europe and North America have all gained forest cover in the last three decades: 511,800 more square kilometres in China; 212,122 more in Europe; and 64,410 square kilometres gained in North America.

The exception to this positive trend has been in countries that are poor, thus Africa is still losing forest cover. No surprise there. Mothers and fathers need fuel to cook food for their families, and if trees are the only option, expect them to disappear. The remedy, which should be obvious, is to use natural gas or electricity from hydro, where available. That will prevent “cutting down the last tree.”

The other remedy is more and not less economic growth to advance human prosperity. Those in poverty, either as families or entire countries, have nothing left with which to buy less-polluting energy. In the case of governments, it is difficult to require and enforce more stringent pollution controls when consumers live hand-to-mouth and companies are barely profitable.

Widespread prosperity allows families to purchase other forms of energy rather than burning what is nearest to them. Rising living standards also allows for clean-ups of rivers and significantly better automobiles, the Thames and Los Angeles lessons respectively.

None of this means nirvana exists. In China, for example, while forest cover has increased, smog is thick for much of the year. That nation’s consumers, businesses and often corrupt governments in particular could usefully spend more money on effective environmental improvements. Also, overfishing in the oceans is still a problem. That speaks to the need for (some) environmental organizations to stop opposing fish farming, which can ease pressure on fish stocks in the commons.

But the general rule holds: It is increasing prosperity which allows for people once too poor to avoid environmental dead ends, to instead have the money and time to care for the environment. Or put another way, only when the last bit of propaganda from Greenpeace ends, might more people realize that from increasing forest cover to cleaner rivers, many environmental indicators have been trending positive for decades.

Mark Milke is an author, policy analyst and contributor to Canadians for Affordable Energy.