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Malcolm Turnbull: Coal and Renewable futures

April 9, 2021

Recently former Coalition Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was briefly appointed by the NSW Cabinet to being the Chair of the NSW Net Zero Emissions and Clean Economy Board.

It was not a long lasting appointment, and the politics are illuminating

For those who are not local. Malcolm Turnbull is a member of the supposedly conservative Coalition of Liberal and National parties. He was deposed from Prime Ministership because he took a few vague steps towards climate action and had an energy policy of sorts. The current PM does not take action or have an energy policy in favour of transition, but says he does. The other main figure in the story is NSW Energy Minister, Matt Kean who also appears to believe in climate change and is working to produce an energy transision policy for NSW. The policy has been exceedingly vague, but is slowly taking shape.

The Announcement

Matt Kean, organised the position for Turnbull on the Net Zero Emissions and Clean Economy Board and said the Board would provide strategic and expert advice on program design and funding proposals under the State’s inaugural $1 billion Net Zero Plan Stage 1: 2020-2030.

The Board will help us to drive a clean industrial revolution for NSW – providing advice on opportunities to grow the economy, create jobs of the future, support industry to develop low emissions technologies and modernise industrial processes,… The Board is also going to be key in delivering low-carbon jobs in the Hunter and Illawarra [where there are coal mines and old industries], to help those economies diversify.
Environment NSW, Malcolm Turnbull AC to chair Net Zero Emissions and Clean Economy Board, 29 March 2021

At the Launch on the 29 March (?) Mr Turnbull said

the world’s move to net zero emissions by 2050 will create huge economic opportunities for Australia and I intend to make sure NSW realises them.
Environment NSW, Malcolm Turnbull AC to chair Net Zero Emissions and Clean Economy Board, 29 March 2021

and:

“In reality, we are going to move away from burning, and the world is going to move away from coal,” he told the Herald and The Age. “I’m very concerned we do that in a way that preserves and increases economic opportunities for everybody”.
Hannam. Turnbull named head of NSW government’s climate advisory board. Sydney Morning Herald, 29 March 2021

The previous month, Mr Turnbull was appointed chairman of the Australian arm of Fortescue Future Industries, the new venture set up by Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest to invest in renewable energy and so-called green hydrogen – which would later be used to indicate a conflict of interest. It should be noted that the Coalition do not, in general. seem to think that membership on government advice bodies and on boards of fossil fuel organisations seem to be conflicts of interest at all.

Turnbull had previously clashed with members of the Coalition at Federal and State level. However NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro, who is also important to this story, said that when approached by Matt Kean:

many weeks ago… I said then, as I say now, that Malcolm Turnbull is very much qualified for such a role…. I’m not opposed, and believe this appointment is based on Mr Turnbull’s merits.
Maddison Turnbull to head climate board. The Australian, 30 March p.2: Paywalled.

The clash begins: the by-election

However a clash started almost immediately. On the 31^st March a government member who had allegedly raped a sex worker, and had offered another(?) sex worker money to have sex in Parliament resigned, due to the scandal – probably the scandal was made more prominent by the series of rape and sexual abuse scandals coming from the Federal Coalition, and their propensity to ignore the problem.

A by-election was called for the Upper Hunter. If the NSW government lost, then they would become a minority, so this is an important by-election.

The Hunter Valley can be described a coal mining area or an agricultural area being rapidly turned into a coal slag heap, depending on one’s politics and aesthetics. The problem for NSW is intensified as while some of the Coalition seem in favour of a low emissions economy, otherwise Kean would not be in his position, many do not seem to be in favour of a low emissions economy which does not include coal burning or coal sales. Coal is supposedly popular with people, and the Upper Hunter has the highest proportion of coal mining jobs of any seat in the state, but is also the fifth-highest for agricultural jobs.

A Report from the Australia Institute found that proposals for new projects in the Upper Hunter amounted to 98 million tonnes of extra coal production a year, or 10 times the size of currently approved for the Adani mine in Queensland. In NSW, 23 mines or mine expansions where being requested for a total production of 155 million tonnes of coal. Coal production in NSW doubled between 2000 and 2014, from 130m tonnes to 260m tonnes a year.

The Australia Institutes’ Richard Denniss said:

At the moment there are more mines seeking approval than could ever be handled by the rail networks and the Port of Newcastle, let alone the world’s coal customers.
Hannam Turnbull calls for halt on new coal mines, inquiry on rehabilitation funds. Sydney Morning Herald, 31 March 2021

The morning of the day the MP resigned, and before the resignation occurred, Turnbull called on the NSW government to pause the approval of new coal mines in NSW, saying the industry is already in decline as the world makes changes to address the climate crisis.

“I think [approvals for new mines are] out of control”, Mr Turnbull told the Herald and The Age, emphasising he was speaking in a private capacity as a landholder in the Upper Hunter region. “It’s like a lunar landscape… There is massive devastation that’s going [on].” [emphasis added, for reasons which will be seen later.]
Hannam Turnbull calls for halt on new coal mines, inquiry on rehabilitation funds. Sydney Morning Herald, 31 March 2021

He accused coal mining companies of “trying to get in before the party ends”, and that approvals are being made without any regard for the cumulative effects.

“The rehabilitation challenge is gigantic and it’s far from clear where those resources are coming from,… It would be good to have a public inquiry into the whole rehabilitation program. The state government is going to end up picking up the tab”
Hannam Turnbull calls for halt on new coal mines, inquiry on rehabilitation funds. Sydney Morning Herald, 31 March 2021

“We have no reason to believe that the companies concerned will have the financial capability to remediate the land, or whether in fact remediation is really possible. And there is no transparency about the level of the bonds or the adequacy of the bonds that have been lodged to support the level of remediation.”
Morton Malcolm Turnbull backs moratorium on new coalmines in NSW. The Guardian 31 March 2021

Turnbull said the government should encourage industries with a long-term future such as clean energy, agriculture, tourism, thoroughbred racing and wine-making. He supported the Australia Institute’s call for a regional plan and coal approval moratorium. “If we want to look after the future of the people in the Hunter as opposed to a few coalminers – coalmining companies – we’ve got to carefully plan it” [1]

He also noted that he had written a submission opposing the proposed expansion of the Mount Pleasant mine [2]

Other reports suggest that the Upper Hunter postcode 2333 area has the worst air quality of any postcode in the state, almost certainly from the existing coal mines, so expansion of coal would be dangerous for resident’s health [3]. This is apparently unimportant, and is rarely mentioned by politicians except to be denied [4].

Condemnation

John Barilaro slammed Mr Turnbull’s comments, saying the government remained “firmly committed to the coal industry in NSW” and there would be no pause on coal mining approvals anywhere in the state.

“Malcolm Turnbull has been appointed to chair the NSW Net-Zero Emissions and Clean Economy Board but this is not a mandate for him to speak on behalf of the NSW government when it comes to coal,” Mr Barilaro said.
“I was willing to give Mr Turnbull the benefit of the doubt but by day two of his appointment he has misjudged his role by calling for a moratorium on mining.”
Hannam Turnbull calls for halt on new coal mines, inquiry on rehabilitation funds. Sydney Morning Herald, 31 March 2021

“He needs to set aside his war on the Coalition, because of his damaged ego after being rejected as leader and prime minister, like I’ve set aside my own past grievances on this issue,…
“Under the NSW government there will be no moratorium on coal in the Upper Hunter or anywhere else in the state”
Morton. John Barilaro attacks Turnbull over ‘war on Coalition’ and says NSW ‘firmly committed’ to coal. The Guardian 31 March 2021

I don’t know if his past grievances show that much sign of being put aside – they were pretty easily triggered. Later on Barilaro said that he supported plans for an expanded coal mining industry in New South Wales, and that this was the wider position of the NSW government.

“For someone to be appointed in a government role, and not to understand the passion and the policy position of the government, that in itself shows that they are thick-headed and and they aren’t interested in what is right and good for the economy.”
Mazengarb. Turnbull pulled from NSW net zero advisory board, after calling for halt to new coal mines. RenewEconomy 6 April 2021

The Minerals Council of Australia joined in the condemnation. They are probably the most powerful lobby group in the country, and already claim the demise of one Prime Minister.

““The NSW government has a Coal Strategy and, given the importance of the sector to the NSW economy, Malcolm should read it because 12,000 Hunter coal miners don’t need another rich guy from Sydney telling them what’s good for them,”
Hannam Turnbull calls for halt on new coal mines, inquiry on rehabilitation funds. Sydney Morning Herald, 31 March 2021

Only minor points for readers noticing that the minerals council is also representing “rich guys.”

Matt Canavan a federal senator stated:

“Stopping our coal going to poor countries is an inhumane policy to keep people in poverty.”
Hannam Turnbull calls for halt on new coal mines, inquiry on rehabilitation funds. Sydney Morning Herald, 31 March 2021

I suppose its worth noting the pseudo climate justice justification for coal, for poisoning locals and making money.

And the Federal Minister for emissions reduction said:

“I was a bit surprised that Malcolm took on this role, a former prime minister, we’ll work with the NSW government to do the work we really need to get more gas into the market…. What I’ll be doing is working with the NSW government to make sure they keep their commitments on gas, on keeping enough energy in the system to put downward pressure on prices.”
McHugh Mal’s green job a shock. Daily Telegraph, 31 Mar 2021: 19. Paywalled

The Federal Coalition is keen on supporting fossil fuels, and considers more gas is vital to economic recovery and growth. Emissions reduction is apparently not something one can plan.

Murdoch Empire

The Murdoch Daily Telegraph reported that Matt Kean had asked Turnbull to stop attacking coal and that the appointment had “sparked an inundation of angry calls from the party’s rank and file, with multiple Liberals now ‘ropeable’ about the former PM’s role.” One MP, Lea Evans, said the job should have gone to “anybody else but Malcolm”. Multiple MPs also told the Telegraph that the rank and file Liberals are furious at the appointment.[O’Doherty Libs hit a minefield as Mal-content fires up. Daily Telegraph 2 April 2021, p2. Paywalled]

Attacks extended to Matt Kean

Mr Kean has been allowed to run, unchecked by the Premier, with energy policies more suited to Labor or even the Greens. Now those misguided policies are coming home to roost.”
Terrible time to hire Turnbull. Daily Telegraph, 2 April 2021. p.28

Another Murdoch vehicle SkyNews was also against the appointment. Immediately on 29 March, Commentator Alan Jones said:

a “rejection” of NSW Liberal MP Matt Kean’s nomination of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull to head the NSW Climate Policy board, is “precisely” what the state government “ought to do”. Mr Jones said Mr Kean… “ought to declare an interest; does any of Malcolm Turnbull’s family have a financial interest, yes or no, in renewable energy,” he said. “I think this is beyond extraordinary and if Matt Kean thinks it’s going to win votes for the Liberal Party, he’s kidding.”
NSW govt must ‘reject’ Turnbull as nominee for NSW Climate Policy board: Alan Jones. SkyNews 31 March 2021

Chris Smith said:

the Liberal Party needs to “wake up to itself and cut ties” with their “miserable old ghost” Malcolm Turnbull.
The former prime minister is set to head up the New South Wales Government’s climate advisory board after being nominated by state Energy Minister Matt Kean.
“How they consider this loser even a valid member of a conservative party, defies everything that comes out of his mouth – especially since he was given the boot,” Mr Smith said. “Everyone who knows anything about politics knows what Turnbull is trying to do – trying every way possible to bring down the government that turned on him…”
Mr Turnbull is “already planning some kind of scorched earth policy” even before they’ve “designed the letterhead for this new agency”.
“On his favourite media again yesterday – the ABC, he called for a moratorium on all new coal mines in New South Wales…. Turnbull might have some kind of renewable dream, but he has no technology or existing system to replace coal.”
Liberals need to ‘wake up and cut ties’ with ‘miserable ghost’ Malcolm Turnbull. SkyNews 1 April, 2021

Rowan Dean said:

Within hours of this ludicrous appointment Turnbull was doing what he does best, sabotaging his federal colleagues at the same time as selling the coal miners of the Hunter down the river… But the biggest fool of them all is Gladys Berejiklian by allowing this lunatic Matt Kean to destroy the future prosperity of Australia’s premier state. We will all be paying for this folly for decades.
‘Biggest joke’: Turnbull’s new climate change job. Sky News. 4 April 2021

There was more in the same temperate vein.

On the 6^th April. The daily Telegraph had the headline Malcolm’s Coal War:

EXCLUSIVE Ex-PM’s NIMBY activism against mine
MALCOLM Turnbull wrote to the NSW government objecting to the expansion of a coal mine citing his family’s nearby 2700 acre grazing property among reasons for his concern.
Caldwell. Malcolm’s Coal War. Daily Telegraph, 6 April 2021, p1. [Unavailable online]

Turnbull protest letter exposes the former PM as ‘anti-coal activist’
MALCOLM Turnbull wrote directly to the NSW government objecting to the expansion of a key coal mine in the Upper Hunter citing his family’s nearby 2700 acre grazing property among reasons for his concern.
Caldwell. Mal’s mine shaft sparks furore. Daily Telegraph. 6 April, p.4 [Unavailable online]

This was the letter that Turnbull mentioned at the beginning of his remarks. It is hardly a triumph of investigative reporting to have ‘uncovered’ it. However the Telegraph recognises that:

The letter was sent before Mr Turnbull’s appointment as the chief of the government’s Net Zero board was publicly announced

So even if you protest against coal in your private life and make clear that you have protested against coal in your personal capacity as a landholder, you don’t escape the cancel… The Board had no influence on planning approvals so it was not a conflict of interest.

The Telegraph then appears to accuse Turnbull of hypocrisy for previously supporting coal.

On February 1, 2017, while he was still prime minister, Mr Turnbull told the National Press Club that old high-emissions coal power plants “cannot simply be replaced by gas, because it’s too expensive, or by wind or solar because they are intermittent”.
As prime minister, Mr Turnbull was also a keen supporter of coal exports to India and backed Australian miners to help power South Asian.
Enough to turn a fossil fan green. Daily Telegraph, 6 April 2021, p.5 [paywalled?]

So he can’t win, whether he supports or does not support coal, or changes his mind based on evidence. Changing your mind, from Murdoch orthodoxy, is not allowed.

On the 6^th April Turnbull’s appointment was terminated…

John Barilaro was the first to announce the sacking on radio 2GB, saying:

We are not proceeding with the appointment of Malcolm Turnbull as chair… You need someone who brings people together and not divides and unfortunately Malcolm has done the opposite… He pulled my pants down within 48 hours of his appointment on an area that I take seriously.
Former PM Malcolm Turnbull dumped from NSW climate board after backlash. New Daily, 6 April 2021

And later:

Under no circumstances did this appointment provide [Turnbull] with a mandate to criticise the mining industry and, as a result of his comments, the NSW government has decided not to proceed with the appointment,
Smith How Turnbull’s new role was ended before it even began. Sydney Morning Herald, 7 April 2021

Matt Kean stated:

The purpose of the Net Zero Emissions and Clean Economy Board is to create jobs in low carbon industries and see the State reduce its emissions in ways that grow the economy… It is important that the focus is on achieving these outcomes, based on facts, technology, science, and economics.
The focus should not be on personality.
…no person’s role on the Board should distract from achieving results for the NSW people or from the government’s work in delivering jobs and opportunities for the people of NSW,
Kean Statement on Net Zero Emissions and Clean Energy Board 6 April 2021

Later Kean said:

I realised that I’d lost the support of my colleagues in keeping Malcolm as the appointed head of the net zero emissions board, and in order to keep the team together, I had to make a very tough decision about someone that I think the world of and I respect greatly.
in order to move forward, in order to keep reducing our emissions in the way we have in New South Wales, I need to bring the whole community along this journey,
Mazengarb “I lost the support of my colleagues”: Kean explains decision to dump Turnbull. RenewEconomy 7 April 2021

Turnbull said:

his [position] was a part-time role which I was asked to do. I didn’t seek it. I agreed because we need to move as quickly as possible to a net zero emissions economy… Unfortunately there are vocal forces in our country, particularly the fossil fuel lobby and the Murdoch media, who are absolutely opposed to that.
Morton. Turnbull blames ‘rightwing media’ for dumping from NSW climate change board. The Guardian 6 April 2021

The Labor Party

On the other side of politics, Labor politician and coal miner supporter Joel Fitzgibbon said on Facebook:

Malcolm Turnbull now formally speaks for the NSW Liberal & National Parties and wants to make the Upper Hunter a coal mine free zone. Every voter in the area should listen to Wednesday’s @RNBreakfast interview. Jodi McKay [the leader of the NSW opposition] should play it over and over again through loud speakers!
Joel Fitzgibbon Facebook, April 2nd

Adam Searle, Labor’s spokesman for climate change and energy said:

This appointment, made without consultation with the Opposition, looks like the government is playing politics and risks creating political divisions in this crucial area.”
Hannam. Turnbull named head of NSW government’s climate advisory board. Sydney Morning Herald, 29 March 2021

Later he wrote on Facebook:

Mr Turnbull’s dumping vindicates Labor’s opposition to his appointment.
It was a divisive appointment – not only on a partisan basis but within his own side of politics. It’s just humiliating for Minister Kean, the Premier and the government to dump him.
Labor is calling on the Berejiklian Government to learn from its mistake here and pick a respected independent person for this very important role.
Searle Facebook, April 6.

The opposition leader, Jodi McKay pointed out that:

It will take a miracle for the Nats [National Party, part of the Coalition] to lose the seat they’ve held for 90 years
McKay Twitter, April 1 2021

That Labor has never won the Upper Hunter, implies that coal miners are unimportant, have never been pro-Labor, or that the area is full of agricultural workers who vote for the supposed farmer’s party [Nationals], although it is pretty much a miner’s party nowadays.

McKay was reasonably quite on the Turnbull affair but wrote on Twitter:

How on earth did it even come to this? John Barilaro backed Turnbull’s appointment in Cabinet.
This should never have been a political appointment and was always going to divisive.
A monumental failure of judgment by John Barilaro.
McKay Twitter April 6 2021

Labor chose a coal miner and union official, Jeff Drayton, as their candidate, who said

I’m a coal miner and a proud coal miner,
Every time I open the newspaper or every time I turn the TV on I see somebody having a go at coal miners and that has to stop.
And I’m going to fight bloody hard to make sure that does.
Raper NSW Labor announce Jeff Drayton as candidate for Upper Hunter by-election. ABC News 13 April 2021

McKay said at the launch:

We have to protect the jobs that are here,” Ms McKay said.
We have to make sure that we respect each and every person that walks into a coal mine.
They don’t do it because they want to damage the environment, they do it because they’re paying the mortgage.
Raper NSW Labor announce Jeff Drayton as candidate for Upper Hunter by-election. ABC News 13 April 2021

Which seems to be missing the point. Who actually is disrespecting coal miners? The problem is that coal mining is dangerous for the world, not just the miners. Miners deserve a transition into decent jobs.

However, it does seem that few people in the Labor Party, perhaps no one, thought it worthwhile to defend either Turnbull’s right to have private opinions, or his proposition that the Hunter did not need more coal mines. No one seems to have thought it worthwhile to ask what was the point of an attempt to deal with climate change, while promoting more coal exports.

As a sidelight on the Election campaign, the Nationals registered websites under the names of their opponents. These seem to be currently not working, so I have no idea what was on them. John Barilaro, the deputy premier said:

They don’t like it when it’s the rough and tumble in reverse, we aren’t a charity, this is a political party and we are in the political game and we’ll use everything to our advantage… <He does not seem to bother describing what rough and tumble he is supposedly responding to>
They were slow off the mark, I’m sorry but it’s not illegal. They were slow off the mark and if you can’t even get your campaign right, the question is are you going to be good enough to run government?…
It’s not the first time, it’s happened to us. It’s a bit of fun, we’ll go through a process to see how we will resolve it but at the end of the day when you say negative campaign, you jump on those websites, it’s the truth…
If they did it to us, we’d be upset, we got them this time, we pulled their pants down,
Fellows. Barilaro: “We pulled their pants down.” Scone.com, 16 April 2021.

Apparently he has an obsession with pants being pulled down.

Economics of Coal?

Australia is one of the biggest coal exporters on the planet. It is the largest exporter of metallurgical coal, and the second largest exporter of thermal coal (Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, Resources and Energy Quarterly December 2020: 42, 56). Exporting more will, unless other coal sellers collapse, more than likely completely blow any chances of containing climate change.

Last year during Covid the price of coal crashed from nearly $100 a tonne to $60-$70 a tonne. The Wambo mine closed for 8 weeks in June, and when the miners returned to work, the owners announced that half the jobs, at least 75 workers, would have to go.

Glencore announced a collection of temporary site and equipment shutdowns across its Hunter Valley mines due to the market. BHP confirmed it intended to offload its Mount Arthur open cut mine, near Muswellbrook.

It seems unlikely that without a major turn around in the coal price, that more coal mines would actually remedy this problem [1].

Later news suggests that Glencore might shut down three of its Hunter Valley mines by 2023 [2]

The Port of Newcastle in the Hunter, also fears the limited future of coal. It is one of the largest coal export ports in the World.

Recognising the terminal decline of coal use to be a long-term threat to the Port [of Newcastle] and the entire Hunter Valley region of NSW, the Port, which exported 158 million tonnes of thermal coal in 2020 (99% of its export volume), has outlined an urgent need to diversify into non-fossil fuel sectors, including green hydrogen/ammonia/aluminium….
The Port suggests demand for its coal exports are expected to peak by around 2027, however this timeframe is likely to have considerably shortened as its major export markets, China, Japan and South Korea have all pledged to become carbon neutral.
Rose. Australia: Port of Newcastle’s roadblock on the path away from thermal coal, IEEFA, 18 March 2021

Later Turnbull said:

Demand for export coal is declining,… That’s clear. The statistics are very clear there and the reasons are obvious. It’s that people in other countries are burning less coal.
We have a number of existing mines in the Hunter [that] are operating below capacity already. There is already enough capacity in the Hunter to meet export demand, you know, for a decade and more. Well into the future.
If you have an unconstrained expansion of existing mines like the expansion at Mt Pleasant or the opening of new mines, all that you are going to do is cannibalise the demand from the existing mines and put workers out of work today.
Kurnelovs & Morton Malcolm Turnbull accuses John Barilaro of ‘gaslighting’ with claim air quality data is manipulated. The Guardian, 8 April 2021

Richard Denniss of the Australia Institute remarked:

No-one would suggest building new hotels in Cairns to help that city’s struggling tourism industry. But among modern Liberals it’s patently heresy to ask how rushing to green light 11 proposed coal mines in the Hunter Valley helps the struggling coal industry.
Coal mines in the Hunter are already operating well below capacity and have been laying off workers in the face of declining world demand for coal, plummeting renewable energy prices and trade sanctions imposed by China. The problem isn’t a shortage of supply, but an abundance.
Denniss Is Malcolm Turnbull the only Liberal who understands economics and climate science – or the only one who’ll talk about it? The Conversation 7th April

Denniss also makes the obvious point, that coal mine expansions impede and lessen investment in agriculture and tourism. Coal Mining also has the capacity to damage agriculture, and cause farmers to sell up and move out.

New coal is supported by “independent experts” paid for by the coal companies.

It’s amazing [how] companies like Ernst & Young that talk about ‘the need to embrace the climate emergency’ are also prepared to knowingly inflate the economic case for new coal mines.
Ernst & Young’s economists use methods for coal mines that result in valuations hundreds of millions higher than even other coal industry consultants. These methods have been described as ‘inflated’, ‘contrary to economic theory’ and ‘plainly wrong’ by the NSW Land and Environment Court, but EY is happy to keep using them.
Deloitte also goes in to bat for new coal mines while saying climate change is the ‘biggest shared challenge facing humanity’”.
Stacey. Crooked Consulting: EY and Deloitte spruik climate on one hand, the explosion in new coal projects on the other. Michael West Media, 5 April 2021

This is yet another example of the information mess. The problem is not the experts but neoliberalism and depending on commercial information sources and consultation companies which are paid to deliver results for those who pay. They won’t get repeat consultation by delivering the results which are not wanted, even if correct. If they do deliver the required results, then they’ll get recommendations from the firm that hired them to other businesses that also require results, so the money keeps coming, and the information keeps getting worse.

Its probably best to have ‘experts’ funded by the public who are free to give advice as neutrally as possible. Science tends to get corrupted when employed by business – as the demands of business are for profit, not for truth.

Some employment stats:

The Upper Hunter Council, which is part of the electorate, claims that it supports “14,180 people, [with] 5,260 jobs and has an annual economic output of $1.668 billion.”

1,344 of those jobs are in the Agricultural sector and 26!! are mining.

On the other hand Musswellbrook which is also part of the upper Hunter claims it supports “16,377 people, [with] 10,017 jobs and has an annual economic output of $7.290 billion.”

It has 3,120 jobs in mining and 541 in Agriculture, forestry and fishing. see remplan

The 2016 census reports that 14.2% of people, in employment in the Upper Hunter electorate, worked in Coal Mining, while only 0.4% of the Australian population works in that field. Coal mining jobs will have a spill over effect, as does any source of income which reaches the general population, but it is always hard to estimate what other jobs and industry it supports.

A poll

This is added a week or so later…

The Australia Institute, which has featured reasonably prominently in this story, carried out a poll in the Upper Hunter electorate using a sample of 686 residents, on the nights of the 7th and 8th of April 2021. Such a small poll is probably not that accurate, but they found:

The majority of voters (57.4%) in the NSW state seat of Upper Hunter support former PM Malcolm Turnbull’s call for a moratorium on new coal mine approvals and a remediation plan for existing mines for the Hunter Valley.
Polling: Upper Hunter – Moratorium on New Coal Mines in the Hunter. Australia Institute, 13 April 2012

About a third of those who support the moratorium ‘strongly support’ the moratorium, while of those who oppose the moratorium only 16% ‘strongly oppose’. Support for the moratorium on new coal mines was present in most voting groups:

Nationals voters 54.1% support,
Labor voters 69.8% support,
Greens voters 91.3% support,
Shooters Fishers & Farmers Party 56.7% support.

The only party offering a moratorium is the Greens, and they will be extremely unlikely to win the by-election as the poll shows they have 9.3% support, so the idea is not being put to the people, only expansion is being allowed. This is one way politics suppresses peoples’ views.

Conclusion

If NSW is to reach real zero emissions, it cannot do this by locking in more coal mines, whether the coal is burnt here or overseas, and so some discussion needs to be had about what will happen in coal intensive areas. What kind of industries can be encouraged?

It is sensible to have that discussion in the Upper Hunter because of the agricultural remnants of the area and the high level of agricultural jobs which exist. Coal expansion will destroy the possibility of those jobs existing in the future. A massive over-production of coal, such as that which seems to be proposed at the moment, would depress the price of coal massively.

The point seems to be, that the NSW government cannot allow such discussion, by anyone associated with the Party, or else they might look disunified. I guess the idea is to encourage lock-in to coal power to keep the industry going and help destroy the Upper Hunter and the climate.

Turnbull was right to bring up the question though unfortunate in his timing – which allowed the fundamentalist coal people to stomp all over him, to get rid of him, and continue settling old scores. It also looks as if any targets, or exploration of green jobs, for NSW are precarious, and likely to be folded away as soon as possible.

Coal and emissions reduction are not compatible, and it appears that, in NSW and the Coalition, emissions reduction must come second to the promotion of coal, and not in any way conflict with the promotion of coal – even if there is apparently no market for the new coal being promoted, the coal poisons local people, and threatens agriculture.

Tags:climate change, coal, politics, renewable energy
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China, the World and Coal

April 8, 2021

The organisation Global Energy Monitor (About which I know nothing, there are too many sources of information nowadays) working with the Sierra Club, has just released a somewhat depressing report (Boom and Bust 2021) on the world’s coal energy generation. It opens:

A steep increase in coal plant development in China offset a retreat from coal in the rest of the world in 2020, resulting in the first increase in global coal capacity development since 2015. A record-tying 37.8 gigawatts (GW) of coal plants were retired in 2020, led by the U.S. with 11.3 GW and EU27 with 10.1 GW, but these retirements were eclipsed by China’s 38.4 GW of new coal plants. China commissioned 76% of the world’s new coal plants in 2020, up from 64% in 2019, driving a 12.5 GW increase in the global coal fleet in 2020….
Outside China, 11.9 GW [of coal] was commissioned
Boom and Bust: 3, 4.

The Chinese boom began as provinces began using coal plant building to stimulate local economies during Covid.

the boom was enabled by loosened restrictions on new coal plant permits and increased lending for coal mega-projects by the central government.
Boom and Bust: 10

Whether this will continue or not is unclear as China’s Central Environment Inspection Group issued a reprimand to the National Energy Administration for not enforcing the countries official limits on coal development…

They said:

the NEA lowered environmental specifications when revising a coal law and did not focus enough on promoting clean energy and a low-carbon transition.
“New coal power capacity at key areas for air pollution was not strictly controlled, leading to what should be built was not built and what shouldn’t was built….
“The failure to put environmental protection at its due height… is a major reason for long-term extensive development in China’s energy industry,”
Reuters. China accuses energy agency of negligence of environmental protection. 30 January 2021

However, it is not clear what the supposed reprimand means, or whether it has the support of high-ups in the party, and:

China’s 14th Five-Year Plan targets non-fossil energy to grow from 16 to 20% of all energy consumption, a rate of increase that is unlikely to cover the growth in power demand, meaning an expansion of coal power is likely through 2025.
Boom and Bust: 5

There is a level of confusion in Chinese policy. People in the West tend to see China as a ruthless and coherent dictatorship, but it may probably better to see it as a continuous struggle and balancing act. The Central government issues instructions and the local provinces work their ways around them, if they chose. The central government knows that it risks power when it tries to impose its will on insiders (far less problems with ‘outsiders’), and that it could start an uprising, or at least the results could be unpleasant and destabilising, so many things proceed rather haphazardly. Vague instructions, hints, reprimands, protests, screening, misdirection, agreeing the central government is wise but ignoring them as much as possible to satisfy local powers and business, jockeying around factions, doing what you can, occasional overt brutality, and so on.

As another example take this official speech I was referred to as an example of Chinese determination to reduce emissions. It’s translated by google translate, which does not help, but if anything can be said to be vague and woolly it would be this speechifying. No mention of procedures or coal for example, but lots of vague exhortation.

Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, President of the State, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Director of the Central Finance and Economics Commission hosted the ninth meeting of the Central Finance and Economics Commission on the afternoon of March 15 to study and promote the healthy development of the platform economy and the realization of carbon
Xi Jinping delivered an important speech at the meeting and emphasized that the development of my country’s platform economy is at a critical period. It is necessary to focus on the long-term, take into account the current situation, make up for shortcomings, strengthen weaknesses, create an innovative environment, solve outstanding contradictions and problems, and promote the healthy and sustainable platform economy. Development; the achievement of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality is a broad and profound economic and social systemic change.
[After Xi’s speech] The meeting emphasized that… It is necessary to build a clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient energy system, control the total amount of fossil energy, focus on improving utilization efficiency, implement renewable energy substitution actions, deepen the reform of the power system, and build a new power system with new energy as the mainstay.
We must implement pollution reduction and carbon reduction actions in key industries, promote green manufacturing in the industrial sector, raise energy-saving standards in the construction sector, and accelerate the formation of green and low-carbon transportation in the transportation sector.
It is necessary to promote major breakthroughs in green and low-carbon technologies, accelerate the deployment of low-carbon cutting-edge technology research, accelerate the promotion and application of pollution reduction and carbon reduction technologies, and establish and improve green and low-carbon technology evaluation and trading systems and technological innovation service platforms.
It is necessary to improve the green and low-carbon policy and market system, improve the energy “dual control” system, improve fiscal and taxation, price, finance, land, government procurement and other policies that are conducive to green and low-carbon development, accelerate the promotion of carbon emission rights trading, and actively develop green finance .
We must advocate green and low-carbon life, oppose luxury and waste, encourage green travel, and create a new fashion for green and low-carbon life.
It is necessary to enhance the capacity of ecological carbon sinks, strengthen land and space planning and use management and control, effectively play the role of carbon sequestration in forests, grasslands, wetlands, oceans, soils, and frozen soils, and increase the increase in ecosystem carbon sinks.
It is necessary to strengthen international cooperation in tackling climate change, promote the formulation of international rules and standards, and build a green silk road.
Xi Jinping presided over the ninth meeting of the Central Finance and Economics Committee. People’s Daily, 16 March 2021 Paragraphing altered and introduced.

This increase in coal, despite official public policy, is particularly bemusing as coal in the US collapsed during the Trump years.

retirements rising to 52.4 GW during Trump’s four years compared to 48.9 GW during Obama’s second term. Despite the record pace of retirements President Biden’s pledge to decarbonize the U.S. power sector by 2035 will depend on retiring existing plants even faster, as only one third of the U.S. coal fleet is scheduled to retire by 2035.
Boom and Bust: 4

In the EU:

retirements rose to a record 10.1 GW in 2020 from 6.1 GW in 2019. EU27 retirements were led by Spain, which retired half of its coal fleet (4.8 GW of 9.6 GW).”
Boom and Bust: 4

In most of Asia

South and southeast Asia may be seeing their last new coal plant projects, as government officials in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia have announced plans to cut up to 62.0 GW of planned coal power. GEM estimates the policies will leave 25.2 GW of coal power capacity remaining in pre-construction planning in the four countries—an 80% decline from the 125.5 GW planned there just five years ago, in 2015.
Boom and Bust: 5

After China, India has the most plants in pre-construction development with 29.2 GW and they commissioned 2 GW of new plants in 2020. Between 2010 to 2017, India increased its coal fleet by an average of 17.3 GW per year.

This is almost the total of the report’s comments on Australia:

Despite the existence of proposals for two new plants totaling 3.0 GW, Australia has not commissioned a new plant since Bluewaters power station in 2009, and that plant was recently declared worthless by one of its part-owners, Sumitomo, which wrote off its US$250 million investment due to the difficulty of obtaining refinancing loans for coal projects.
A proposed 2.0 GW Kurri Kurri coal plant is on shaky ground as the builder China Energy Engineering Group (CEEC) is under sanctions from the World Bank for committing fraud in a power project in Zambia. The proposal has also been made moot by a plan to build a gas-fired plant in Kurri Kurri to replace the Liddel power station, which will be retired in 2023.
Shine Energy’s proposed 1.0 GW Collinsville power station received an A$3.6 million grant for a feasibility study despite the fact that Shine has never developed a power plant.
Boom and Bust: 19 Paragraphing introduced.

The progress is such that:

“no region is close to meeting the required reductions for the 1.5 degree pathway…. [and] the world as a whole is no closer to the 1.5 pathway than it was two and a half years ago.
Globally, the projected coal-fired capacity in 2030, if all proposed projects are realized and retirements are not accelerated further, is almost 2,400 GW, while the amount of capacity consistent with the IPCC 1.5 degree pathways would be 1,100 GW.
Boom and Bust: 15, 17

*************

Footnote:

In the years since the Paris agreement, 13 countries have made a decision to phase out coal by 2030, compared with just two that had such a commitment before.

Country	Phaseout year	Decision year
Belgium	2017	2010
Portugal	2021	2019
France	2022	2016
United Kingdom	2024	2015
Italy	2025	2017
Ireland	2025	2018
Greece	2028	2019
Netherlands	2029	2018
Finland	2029	2019
Canada	2029	2019
New Zealand	2030	2017
Denmark	2030	2017
Israel	2030	2018
Slovakia	2030	2019
Hungary	2030	2019
Germany	2038	2020

The Powering Past Coal Alliance claims that they have 36 countries and 36 subnational governments (some of which are within the countries they are counting) who have coal phase out measures.

Tags:China, coal, renewable energy
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Planet of the Humans: some comments

May 1, 2020

This is a movie which is probably worth seeing, but while it makes some important points it is also so obviously out of date, it can’t be recommended completely.

Another reason for not recommending it is that it is blithely depressing. The film gives no way forward, other than the useless fantasy of population reduction…

So onto the Bad Things.

All the data on real renewable energy is at least six years out of date, some of it is 10 or more years out of date. One of his main sources, Ozzie Zehner, published his book on the subject in 2012 and, going by his website, has not published anything else since 2014. Anthropologist Nina Jablonski is a physical anthropologist interested in the development of skin colours or pigmentation, not an energy expert or a student of technology.

No decent solar panels nowadays will be 8% efficient, or decay in 10 years. If you get panels like that now you have been defrauded. The Cedar Street Solar Array he instances for these figures and for being able to power 10 homes, was apparently built in 2008. Not the most recent farm and far smaller than more recent solar farms owned by the same organisation, which can supposedly power far more homes.

It is true that Renewable Energy (RE) technology does not last forever, but neither do coal or nuclear energy stations. Machines break down, wear out and in the case of nuclear become dangerous. The question is about life cycle emissions.

A study in Nature Energy in 2017 found that over the lifetime of the technology, the carbon footprints of solar, wind, and nuclear power are about one-twentieth of those of coal and natural gas, even if CCS worked. Another study from 2014 argued that:

a wind turbine with a working life of 20 years will offer a net benefit within five to eight months of being brought online…. It is likely that even in a worst case scenario, lifetime energy requirements for each turbine will be subsumed by the first year of active use.

The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory concluded (in an ongoing study probably started in 2012?) from a study of many publications on emissions life cycles that “The central tendencies of all renewable technologies are between 400 and 1,000 g CO₂eq/kWh lower than their fossil-fueled counterparts without carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).”

So, all this is not recent, obscure, or pathbreaking research, its been out there for some while. The obvious point is that there is plenty of reason to replace coal and gas with Renewable Energy (RE) – and gas emissions are usually underestimated because fugitive (escaped) emissions often seem much higher than recognised – largely because gas pipe systems, especially in cities, are old and complicated and hard to police.

While I personally am uncomfortable with the ways that the grid works, it is usually the case that companies who are claiming to be 100% renewable buy renewable energy, but do not have it connect directly to their places of work. They buy the power from renewable sources, which put it into the grid where it gets mixed up with other energy and the companies get their power from the grid. In other words, this is simply the way it works. It is not hypocritical to pay for renewable energy and take the energy from the grid, as long as the renewable supplier, and the system, is working.

The film does not interview any people about contemporary renewables, their costs or their consumption of materials. Its a bit like saying “with 64K memory, personal computers will never let you do anything like write a book,” and refusing to talk to anyone in computing to find things have moved on.

Not surprisingly the film’s discussion of electric vehicles seems to be set at the launch of the General Motors Chevy Volt in 2010. It is now no longer made. Not a Tesla, or anything else, in sight.

Generally people seem to agree that Electric cars, even if powered by electricity provided by coal, are now less polluting (particularly in terms of particulates) than petrol cars when being driven, and over the life cycle. [1], [2], [3], [4]. Even the US Department of Energy seems to agree. And it could be argued that you have to start somewhere to get better. However, as many have suggested, it would probably be better to work on a radical revision of the transport system to remove the need for millions of cars and the road systems that ruin cities.

Mining is not just a bad problem when it involves renewables. Coal mining, fracking, and oil and gas drilling are all deeply problematic and destructive of land, but this is not mentioned, perhaps just to make renewables look worse – with speeded up film no less. Another problem is that over the last 30 years the amount of coal and oil being burned has massively increased – partly this is because it has been encouraged and subsidised by Governments all over the planet. It takes a lot to replace that increase. Again there is no exploration of this, just an attack on renewables.

Despite the implied claims of the film, there is no evidence solar panels create deserts, or “solar dead zones”. Indeed there are suggestions that the shade of panels might be useful for farm animals and for growing plants, etc and the place were he made this point is now apparently generating electricity again.

Recent renewable developments tend to have storage, so they don’t need coal generators on all the time. Storage is being improved and researched. We may not need batteries; the New South Wales government suggests that by 2040, NSW could get 89% of its local power from solar and wind, backed by pumped hydro storage. Others suggest there are “22,000 potential pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) sites across all states and territories of Australia.” And, apparently surprisingly, back up coal, or gas, generators do not produce anywhere near the amounts of pollution produced by fully active generators – a point left unmade.

While it is absolutely correct that we are not replacing dirty energy with really clean energy at anything like the rates we need to survive, it now seems fully possible for Australia to get up to 75% renewable, or more, by 2025 if we wanted to, without huge amounts of trauma, and even cost savings to ordinary consumers. Even in 2017 some people (Andrew Blakers, Bin Lu and Matthew Stocks) from the ANU argued that it would be cheaper to replace Australia’s entire aging coal generation with renewable energy, than to build new coal.

Without massive government support, coal is largely collapsing. In Australia, coal stations are aging and uneconomic to run. It is only the Coalition parties who are interested in building coal energy stations, and no power company will do this without subsidy.

There is nothing obviously inherent in renewables which is stopping them from replacing gas or coal. That largely seems to a matter of established convention, politics, financial support from States, and regulations which expect the system to have the characteristics of coal supply. Consequently, we probably need a change in the economic system, and its power relations, to do this. We certainly need a change in government, and a willingness to stand up to well funded fossil fuel companies and their scare campaigns, and to films like this. However, it is not surprising that to build a new energy system, that initially we have to use the old one.

One of the problems that remains undiscussed by the film, is that the more renewables we have, the less economic fossil fuels become, and the more subsidy or price hiking they need to survive. And the more likely they are to try and kill off renewables.

The percentage of energy which is currently generated by real renewables across the world is tiny, but increasing in many countries with considerable apparent success. For example, in the third quarter of 2019, the UK’s renewables generated more electricity than their coal, oil and gas plants combined. Researchers at Stanford say they were:

surprised by how many countries we found had sufficient resources to power themselves with 100 percent wind, water, and solar power….
The entire renewable energy footprint [. . .] is on order of 1.15 to 1.2 percent of the world’s land. … In the United States, if you just look at oil and gas, there are 1.7 million active oil and gas wells and 2.3 million inactive wells. Collectively they take up somewhere between one to two percent of the U.S. land area. And that’s not counting the refineries, the pipelines, or coal and nuclear infrastructure.

Another study suggests that Europe’s untapped wind energy potential amounts to approximately 52.5 terawatts, or about 1 million watts for every 16 European citizens.

We are learning from the forerunners in the transition. Again you have to start somewhere, and the first in line will be the clumsiest.

The film does not make any useful comparison of renewables with coal, just vague assertions that it is as bad as coal and oil for climate, which is frankly no longer true, if it ever was. The points could have been made that renewables will not save us by themselves, or that there is a lot of capital sunk into opposing energy transition. It also could have clearly stated that not doing renewables will not save us either; indeed staying with fossil fuels will speed the destruction.

Good points in the film

The film is absolutely right that bio-fuel, woodchip burning, or waste burning is not renewable or green. It is frequently counted as renewable as you might eventually regrow trees or whatever, but this is now clearly false. Most people advocating non-algal biofuels are not interested in solutions to the problems we have. Current biofuels are net greenhouse gas emitters, displace people from land, produce deforestation or lower agricultural production; they are a complete waste of time. Alligator fat is an obvious waste of money and research, which I guess is why it was mentioned….

Biofuels are a problem in Germany, and the UK has “become the largest importer of wood pellets in the world in just five years,” and it is using biofuels to claim growth in renewable energy. However, according to the US Energy Information Administration in 2019, biomass apparently provided about 1.4% of US electricity. This is just less than solar which provides 1.8% and wind which provides 7.3%. So there is too much biofuel in comparison. However, if you wanted to complain surely we should complain that gas still provides 38.4% and coal 23.5% of the electricity, and that no green energy challenges these fossil fuels which are leading the world to disaster?

Those green organisations which supported biofuel and woodchipping were mislead, or distracted. As the film shows, this was not a popular ‘solution’ with ordinary members, who rightly saw it as not green. The odd thing is that this section alone, implies that if the film is making the argument that the environmental movement has been bought out, then that argument is probably incorrect.

While Bill McKibben did once support biofuel, he has not supported it for quite a while – another example that the film is out of date. He was not interviewed for the film other than in passing, or asked to address the question properly or recently. This looks like character assassination.

The film obviously did not bother to investigate those green groups who do not think renewables are the complete answer. In the words of another review

They too wish to ignore the groundswell of radical resistance building all over the world against cancerous capitalism…. this failure played right into the hands of those who don’t give a damn about the planet.

They don’t even look at the Drawdown people. Why did they behave like this? This refusal leaves the film with nowhere constructive to go.

The film points out that businesses lie continually. Absolutely correct. You can make the best ideas in the world totally destructive and false if the profit motive and psychopathic billionaires run everything. They destroy places and then move on, as a matter of course.

As a consequence, this is not a film which gives much leeway for the righteous to self-praise, even if that is what they are trying to use the film to do. However, the critique of business and markets is so low key, and so unintegrated into the argument the right can ignore them completely, or just pretend that environmentalists are corrupt.

Elsewhere the film makers mention the contemporary extinction crisis, and make the obvious point that green tech will not bring them back. But they do not discuss this in the film. And the reason that the extinction crisis exists is not primarily because we are starting to use Renewables.

The main real point of the film is that it is impossible to continue as we are doing. This is undeniable.

The Film’s Proposed Solutions

Degrowth and shut down of economic expansion. The film does not present any way of achieving this, except to imply it requires some kind of change in our life and values. We probably need to try and reduce energy consumption. This is not easy, but it is well worth discussing, and an extra five minutes of the film on this could have been useful. These cutbacks will take planning and research, but even that is not advocated. As a footnote the much maligned Bill McKibben writes:

I’ve written books and given endless talks challenging the prevailing ideas about economic growth, and I’ve run campaigns designed entirely to cut consumption.

But they could not be bothered to discuss this. In reality, the film raises the issue in passing to quickly move on to the second fantasy option – and this is possibly how people manage to ignore the film’s main useful message: infinitely accelerating growth on a finite planet is just not possible.

The film moves into fantasy, and its fantasy solution is:

Lowering population. This gets more discussion than any other solution, which is not much. However, if population decrease is the answer, in the time we have left, who are you going to kill? Without such discussion the “solution” is just words that absolve us of action.

Given that people in Australia and the US consume more resources per head than most other countries, we should probably start culling there…. but I don’t see him volunteering. Neither will I.

Yes, if every Indian and Chinese person comes to consumes like the average Australian we are all dead. But we cannot expect them to stop heading that way, if we won’t stop. Why on earth should people outside our countries take all the burden?

So lets start learning to consume less and work less, to try and prevent culling from happening through climate and disease.

And remember that takes working at changing social relations as well…. We didn’t end up where we are because neoliberals were scared of social engineering, whatever they said to the contrary.

A film like this could have tried to help us deal with the crisis. But it doesn’t. Indeed it feeds apathy, retreat and a sense that the problem is all too much. This is why I think people are so upset by the film. We don’t expect this deadendness from Michael Moore.

So what do we need to do, when we face destruction? How do we act, if our best attempts so far are not working?

That’s probably a topic for another post.

However, a steadily increasing carbon price with the money raised distributed back to the population so they lose little income, is an obvious policy which would incentivise lower emissions and allow business planning. Carbon trading is not so good, as it subjects the price to the vagaries of the market and price fixing.

It is essential to stop:

Using fossil fuels
Emitting pollution of all kinds (gas, chemical, particulate etc)
Having unprocesseable wastes
Deforestation
Over fishing
Poisoning of water supplies
Denaturing land through bad agricultural practices
Destroying fertile land for housing

[Another venture in a helpful direction:

Zachary King: Unconventional Optimism: Lessons from Climate Change Scholars and Activists ]

Tags:coal, Disinformation, renewable energy
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Problems for Renewables: Apparent costs and ‘lock-in’.

January 18, 2020

Costs of building new renewable energy systems, are difficult to estimate accurately, as are the costs for fossil fuel and nuclear energy generation.

One of the problems of capitalism is that it functions through hype, exaggeration, advertising, PR and so on. The fight over information is part of the fight over sales and subsidies. Subsidies are frequently ignored as part of the costs, or claimed not to be costs, in order to make products look cheaper, or to keep the subsidies from people’s objection. People can also exagerate benefits of particular innovations, or promised innovations, to get research funding or for commerical purposes. This activity makes it more likely for people to hold off purchase, until a product is ready for market, or to purchase an existing product. Few decisions in this arena can be entirely rational, or based on guaranteed useful data.

This is to be expected. While communication is not possible without the possibility of deception, social systems can increase that probability or, possibly, diminish it. We have a problematic system. People have political and economic reasons to misrepresent all kinds of ‘facts’. In our system fake news about almost everything is absolutely normal – especially if the fakery is already established, or supports established power and energy relations. Consequently it is hard to get accurate figures on anything to do with sales of large projects.

We can only look at appearances, and these seem reasonably clear.

In Australia coal mines often depend on taxpayer subsidy. We build rail lines, roads, and offer them free or cheap water at the expense of farmers and towns. We don’t insist upon them rehabilitating the mines; just a few trees around the mine edge, to obscure the views of passers-by, might be enough, if even that much gets done. We don’t require there to be any expenditure to clean up the ongoing pollution they issue. They can destroy our water table and water supply and that is just considered bad luck.

The jobs provided by coal mines are minimal. Adani has a royalty holiday, and Barnaby Joyce even wanted taxpayers to give Adani 1 billion dollars for more or less nothing in return except loss of water from the water gift. As it happens, the IEEFA estimate that Adani is already “set to receive over $4.4 billion of tax exemptions, deferrals and capital subsidies from Australian taxpayers,” assuming a 30 year life for the mine.

In effect, with coal, we seem to pay people to take our minerals and destroy our environment. At the least they get a lot of earnings which are tax free.

Similar events seem true of coal based energy. Burning coal not only produces climate change but it also poisons people and ecologies. I guess we have been using coal for so long that we don’t recognise the dangers. As well, coal gets government support for it to be locked-in. In the US Trump is apparently trying to cut pollution standards to make coal more economic. Death and illness is of no concern.

In Australia, we also face the problem that most coal generation is nearing the end of its life, by 2030 55% of coal fired energy stations will be over 40 years old, and heading into unreliability. We need to build replacement sources of energy, or we will face large-scale shortages of energy. This is simply fact.

Renewables are now said to be, generally, either competitive with coal or cheaper than coal, although there is debate [1], [2], [3], [4].

In Australia, it’s obvious they are more than competitive, because the government has to keep talking about taxpayer subsidy for new coal energy, or talking about forcing people to keep old coal fired energy stations going. No one wants to build coal energy stations on their own bat. The government also appears to have guaranteed to purchase electricity from Gas, to get it going. On the other hand, heaps of companies in Australia seem to want to build renewable farms, and this is despite considerable regulatory inhibition and ambiguity. (The same appears true in the US where, according to Bloomberg, “a total of $55.5 billion were spent in the sector last year, an increase of 28%”, which is apparently a record). In Australia one of our main problems with renewables seems to be government regulation, the political power of the coal mining industry, and ongoing tax concessions and subsidies for coal. Some this regulation is left over from the kind of regulation which helped centralised coal development, and now promotes coal lock-in and hinders coal-exit.

If we balanced the competition by removing the hostile regulation and subsidies for dirty energy, it would probably help renewable growth.

Whatever the case might be here, countries which sell coal seem to be offering subsidies to third world countries to get them locked into coal based energy production, and slow down any renewable transformation. If places never use much coal, then they may not miss it. This is economic power attempting to structure the energy market to give it continuing markets and profits without having to change. Coal companies are fighting for their profits and that involves politics as part of their market action. We should assume that coal producers act similarly in Australia.

Another problem is that network costs are important. It is frequently objected that renewables require new grids and this is costly. A problem we face in Australia is private ownership of the grid by companies who are reluctant to invest in getting the grid to places where the renewable energy, which competes with their energy supply, can be built. This is a lock-in produced by ownership. Ownership also gives power to influence markets.

Existing fossil fuel generation has a legacy of networks which were largely paid for by the taxpayers and then sold on. This should diminish coal costs, and produce lock-in to energy generation at particular locations. However, given that coal energy stations are not being rebuilt or renewed, it does not seem to.

Other forms of energy have the same network problems, but they seem to be ignored. Every time a new gasfield comes online, pipelines have to be developed, and that does not seem a problem to those objecting to networks for new renewable sites.

If governments took climate change seriously, then building new powerlines in consultation with the industry, would probably be the way to go. It would be costly, but still less costly than doing nothing, and could probably be helped to be paid for by removal of subsidies for fossil fuels.

Storage is also a cost issue, but in some places you have to include storage as part of the development, so (in those cases) it is fixed in. Also if we spent more money on R&D we might develop simple cheap solutions (we might not, but we are more likely to). The Scotts are apparently using heavy weights suspended in deep pits. [see also] This works like pumped hydro without the need for water – which would be a bonus in Australia.

Another objection to renewables, in terms of cost, is that they are intermittant, so we have to overproduce to get a stable supply. But if we do over-produce, this is not necessarily a problem. Over production is useful as, for example, when excess power can be directed into making hydrogen as a portable back up fuel, and shut down when heavy demand returns.

People are still arguing that nuclear energy is cheap and effective, but often do not include the expenses of decommission in that cost. But as I have argued before, with nukes, the big trouble is that no-one in the West seems to want to build nuclear, because it is not economical, and most of the nuke companies have gone out of business, or gone out of the business.

The UK government had to guarantee massive electricity prices and taxpayer funded indemnity at Hinkley Point, because no one would insure it. It’s also running massively over budget.

While I could be wrong, I am not aware of anyone prepared to build fossil fuel or nuclear energy supplies, in Australia, without massive subsidy, guaranteed prices (as with the gas energy mentioned above) or even subsidy and diminishment of safety requirements. This indicates to me, that both of these sources are less economic than they once were, and this is before you add in the costs of the ecological destruction or climate change they generate. In practice Renewables are ready to go, especially with a little network planning, or admission that the market does not solve every urgent problem in the right amount of time.

Ultimately we cannot absolutely expect the kinds of service we have now. If we keep on with fossil fuels, and ecological destruction the situation is likely to become untenable – we are already destroying the Earth’s carrying capacity. We have to shift to another source of power. Nuclear does not seem viable. That leaves renewables, which are not yet built in anything like the required amounts, and which may not be continuous, although they can be made close to continuous.

Only thirty or forty or so years ago, power black outs were quite common in Australia, and we managed to live with them. So we can probably manage to live with them now.

Environmental ecology is an important part of the social and economic process. The environment currently keeps us going without much human input. If we keep destroying it through pollution, then it cannot. Everything depends on everything else. We have to either repair the environment, which costs, or make an artificial envionment which probably costs more.

So at all levels, controlled low-pollution production of renewables, seems like a reasonable solution, one that is actually favoured by markets as well as by environmental concern.

Tags:coal, economics, renewable energy
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Dangers of nuclear energy

January 17, 2020

There is quite a lot of space being spent on denying that nuclear energy is dangerous.

One way of doing this is to compare the number of deaths we can attribute to coal to the number of deaths coming from nuclear energy. Unfortunately I cannot paste in the graph from this site, but it alleges death rates from energy production per TWh are as follows:

32.72 for brown coal
24.62 for black coal
18.43 for oil
4.63 for biomass
2.82 for gas
0.07 for nuclear

It is impressive to see how many people die from fossil fuel poisoning.

We should also note that there are quite big disputes about how many people died as a result of Chernobyl (in Ukraine) and Fukushima (Japan). As Wikipedia notes in its current article on deaths in Chernobyl: “From 1986 onward, the total death toll of the disaster has lacked consensus; as peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet and other sources have noted.”

These deaths are quite hard to measure – unless people have large scale radiation burns, then they could have died from other causes. There are political and business reasons for lowering the death count as well. The initial Soviet reports claimed 2 people had died at Chernobyl. Hardly anyone accepts that figure today. On the other hand, some people might blame unrelated sickness on the accidents. Again people may not have died but may have been sicker than they would have been. The radiation spread quite a long way. In 2016 The World Health Organisation said “more than 11,000 thyroid cancer cases had been diagnosed” in the three most affected countries, but they gave no information as to whether this was much higher than normal, per head of population.

I remember reading the early descriptions of the Fukushima accident which implied quite large amounts of radiation sickness amongst the workers who heroically went back in to try and shut it down. This is no longer mentioned. Hopefully, they all healed, rather than were ignored. However, the big problem is that, in neither Chernobyl or Fukushima, has it yet been possible to clean the site, or seal it permanently. Both sites are still problems.

Anyway, despite the lack of agreed figures, it certainly seems likely that fossil fuels have been more overtly deadly than nuclear energy.

However that does not mean we should automatically go for nuclear. There are still the problems of expense, subsidy and few trustworthy companies wanting to build them. Never mind the lack of enthusiasm people show for living near them. Or the difficulties of guaranteeing waste disposal safety for ever.

Tags:coal, nuclear energy
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Jobs from Adani

January 17, 2020

An old bit of honesty from the Federal Government on the tens of thousands of jobs that were to be provided by the Adani mine. Note the revised figures are still supposed to be wonderful:

Senator Bridget McKenzie: “They [Adani] will be employing 1,500 through the construction phase and around about 100 ongoing”

This can be seen as a classic example of ignoring one’s promise and putting a happy face on.

However, these figures still seem significantly greater than the figures given in court for the full mine, where there are actually penalties for lying.

Since this interview jobs figures have been revised again – telling the likely truth is unpolitic. I guess we will not know until it’s all over, and we have just permanently lost water.

A further comment this time from the Australia Institute:

coal mining contributes 2.2% to the GDP of Australia, $39.8 billion of almost $1.85 trillion. [how much of that stays in Australia, or goes to Australian workers, taxes and royalties is another matter]
coal mining employs around 57,900 workers, making up only 0.4% of the almost 13 million-strong Australian workforce

There are still other figures.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics considers that their the relatively recently introduced Labour Account is now the best source of information on employment by industry. It is “specifically designed to produce industry estimates that present the most coherent picture of the Australian labour market.” However it could still be classed as experimental, and primarily includes people who directly work in the industry and not in its supply chains.

These figures shows that in the 2017-18 financial year, there were around 38,100 people employed in coal mining.

Coal mining is not that important or that big an employer

Tags:adani, coal, Disinformation
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Joel Fitzgibbon on the Australian Labor Party

January 1, 2020

Joel Fitzgibbon has a piece in the Herald today, as part of the debate in the Australian Labor party about what it should do to win back government, after its amazing loss. It does not seem to be particularly well thought out, and is probably based on the massive swing against him in an electorate with a big coal industry, which he has blamed on the party being too green.

He starts by mentioning the difficulty of satisfying traditional voters and the “more recently arrived progressive followers.”

By more recent progressives, he presumably means the people who voted for Whitlam in the early 1970s, or even earlier. These people are not recent. They are not an add on, by any normal measure. That he thinks they are, is rather strange in itself.

He is “against a creep to the left,” a creep which seems improbable, given the party’s steady move to the right from the Hawke and Keating days onwards, and the steady loss of union power.

The centre is now what would have been called centre right in those days. Even the Conservative Menzies would be considered a rabid left-winger if people approached his writings without preconceptions, as he thought that people had a right to social security without harassment.

Fitzgibbon wants to win back blue collar workers, which is fair enough – if he had evidence that Labor lost significant numbers of blue collar voters anywhere other than Queensland, where a union was fighting against them.

Some data on Blue collar workers… Randomly picked, and a little old, so I need something better, but…..

29% of people in the labour force are blue-collar workers. This is not much of a base to base your hopes on, when you have close to 100% of all working age and older people voting.

Blue collar workers are apparently under-represented in social service groups, cultural groups and school groups. So they are probably not party members of union members. So they will be hard to get loyalty from. If they are relatively low wage, they will want some wage security, which is not something he mentions as important.

He thinks it is important to reject the Greens, despite the Greens’ firm alliance with Julia Gillard, and their general alliance with Kevin Rudd. It was not the Greens fault that Rudd was deposed, or that Gillard was deposed. It is not clear, why if climate is a priority, then more intensely separating from the Greens than Labor currently does (which is pretty intensely), should also be a priority, unless Labor had better climate and environmental policies – which I doubt it has.

One way of keeping both blue collar and professional voters might be to be separate from the Greens, but make it clear that the Greens are potential allies, and that Labor will not allow greening to diminish jobs; even though there is actually little evidence that being green would lower either jobs or wages. At the moment, anyone with any concern about environment is not going to give Labor their first preference – especially not given his leader’s ongoing promotion of coal and Fitzgibbon’s next proposals

He seems to think that refusing to support increasing oil, gas and coal mines and exports and incidentally killing water supplies and fertility, is the same as “turning our backs on resources-sector workers”, but it is not. It would be if you did not have plans to replace jobs with equally high paying work, or if you did not realise that mining jobs are in decline in any case. As I’ve said before, there are almost no mining jobs in the mega-Adani mine.

I guess this refusal to go against mining corporations is Labor’s official position but it does not have to be. We do not have to destroy our ecology in order to give people good work, and interestingly the survey above states “blue-collar workers gain less meaning from their work than other people gain from theirs.” So they may not be enamoured of their jobs, just of having work and income. It may not be sensible to defend jobs which are both boring and dangerous.

Again, part of Labor’s problem may be that the workforce does see that Labor abandoned them when it introduced the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and 90s which may well have led to stagnant wages, house price increases, increasing inequality, cut backs in services and so on. Certainly I could imagine that people might not think Labor had any solutions to these problems. His idea that “Hawke and Keating proved Labor can promote and defend these causes without walking away from our traditional base” is probably delusional.

He then promotes religion: “People of faith worshipping in Eltham expect the same respect and freedoms as those worshipping in Everton.” Strangely the survey quoted above reports blue collar workers are even less religious than most other Australians. So you may put your supposed base off by becoming more overtly religious and granting religious people privileges to interfere in other people’s lives on the grounds of religion – which is what the religious freedom debate seems to be attempting to do.

Finally “Labor has the policy wit to remain a leader on climate change policy while also supporting our coal miners and those who work in the petroleum sector.” Unfortunately this is just an aspiration; he gives no evidence for this assertion, and no inkling of what policies might be involved. He doesn’t even wave his hands about. This is a particular failing given the Black November/December fires, and it puts him on a level with the PM.

Labor needs to show that it understands the ecological precariousness of agriculture and water in this country, and how these are repeatedly threatened by mining, and how Labor is going to act without threatening numbers of jobs or incomes, and by providing new jobs.

Perhaps it could start trying.

Continued in What could the ALP have done better?

Tags:climate change, coal, politics
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Australia increases fossil fuel exports

November 24, 2019

This is largely a series of quotes from the UN 2019 Production Gap report.

Governments [through out the world] are planning to produce about 50% more fossil fuels by 2030 than would be consistent with a 2°C pathway and 120% more than would be consistent with a 1.5°C pathway.
P.4

Australia is not only a major fossil fuel producer, but also the world’s leading exporter of coal (IEA 2019a) and the second largest producer and exporter of LNG (IGU 2018). With government backing, and proposed major new investments in mines and port facilities, Australia’s coal and gas outputs and exports could continue their rapid rise (Office of the Chief Economist 2019). Proposed large coal mines and ports — if fully completed — would represent one of the world’s largest fossil fuel expansions (around 300 Mt per year of added coal capacity) (Buckley 2019a; Department of the Environment and Energy 2018). The rise of hydraulic fracking has also opened the door to discussions on tapping into the country’s vast resources of unconventional (shale) gas (Westbrook 2018).
Australia supports increased fossil fuel production through several measures:
Tax-based subsidies total more than AUD 12 billion (USD 9 billion) per year (Market Forces 2019). This includes the fuel tax credit scheme, which allows fossil fuel companies to claim tax credit on their fuel use (Australian Taxation Office 2017), and a budgeted AUD 1.7 billion (USD 1.3 billion) for accelerated depreciation for oil and gas assets (Australian Department of the Treasury 2015).
Geoscience Australia, a government agency, absorbs sector risk by financing and conducting resource exploration, which was worth AUD 100 million (USD 75 million) in fiscal 2017 (Department of Industry, Innovation and Science 2018).
The government takes various steps to support increased coal production, including, for example, fast-track approval, private road construction, and reduced royalty payments for Adani’s recently approved Carmichael coal mine project in the Galilee Basin (Buckley 2019b).
Recent legislation increased government support for investment in new overseas infrastructure projects from AUD 2 million to AUD 1.2 billion to accommodate Australian coal and gas exports (Parliament of Australia 2019; Hasham 2019).
Government projections show coal production growing another 10% by 2024 and 34% by 2030, relative to 2018 levels (Office of the Chief Economist 2019; Syed 2014). As shown in Figure 4.6, the government also envisions gas production growing 20% by 2024 and 33% by 2030 relative to 2018 levels (Office of the Chief Economist 2019; Syed 2014).
Under these projections, Australia’s extraction-based emissions from fossil fuel production would nearly double (a 95% increase) by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. However, its NDC targets a reduction in territorial GHG emissions of 26–28% over the same period (Government of Australia 2016)”
p.35

This likely illustrates:

The heavy symbolic importance that coal has for developmentalism and prosperity, even faced with ecological destruction and massive climate change: the coal rush continues.
The dominant groups in the world are heavily identified (self-cateogrised) as belonging with fossil fuel companies, the use of fossil fuels, or the traditional trajectories of development through fossil fuels. They do not seem to care what will happen to their populations if climate scientists are correct about the likely tumultuous effects of higher Greenhouse gas emissions.
Dominant groups do not see that a method which used to produce order, is now highly likely to produce chaos, unintended effects or blowback. Reality has changed but ideology lingers, as do the power and wealth relations of fossil fuel societies.
The mess of information, provides many alternate stories which can make it seem that the risk of the process is negligible, and that the dominant groups find it easy to dismiss information which suggests the risk is not negligible, which further reassures them. I have been told that Right wing MPs in Australia refuse to attend climate briefings, and we know that despite the requests of State Governments, the Coalition recently refused to allow a general briefing of State Treasurers by a member of the Reserve Bank, on the risks of Climate Change. Acceptance of Information seems now almost totally driven by political and market allegiances. They also deny large bush fires could have anything to do with extended droughts, higher than average temperatures, and longer runs at peak temperatures. Instead they and the Murdoch Empire blame the effect on non-existent Greens policies.
The green paradox; the more likely it is that fossil fuels will be stopped, the more pressure there is to mine and sell them before it is too late, and there are fewer purchasers.

Tags:climate change, coal, Disinformation, economics
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The Australian Labor Party and Coal

September 26, 2019

Someone was telling me that the one thing you could bet on was that Labor supported renewables and did not support the Adani coal mine in Queensland.

However:

Before the election the Queensland Labor government apparently gave Adani unlimited water rights, for the mine. This looks like enthusiastic support at the cost of many people in Queensland, especially with the current drought.

Labor, did not have to run their recent election campaign by accepting the fictional job figures that Adani promoted out of court, but severely diminished in court, and they did not have to avoid proposing any alternative projects which would bring more employment in the area.

Labor did not have to ignore the possibility the Adani mine could damage the water table, and destroy farms all down central Qld and NSW. They could also have made it clear they were not happy with the mine.

Labor did not have to support fracking in the Northern Territory against the wishes of the Aboriginal landholders, to show how eager they were to support renewables.

After the election, Labor did not have to support and help pass two motions in the Senate saying how wonderful the Adani mine was.

After the election, the Queensland Labor government did not have to rush to approve the mine, nor did they have to strip away the right of aboriginal owners to object. Nor did they have to drop prosecutions against Adani for breaking environmental conditions. They could have moved slowly, rather than with avid enthusiasm.

After the election Hunter Valley Labor candidate Joel Fitzgibbon was saying that Labor should have made it clearer that they were not anti-coal, during the election. Nobody, corrected him, so we can assume they are happy for that to stand.

After the election, Queensland party president John Battams gave a speech saying “Queensland Labor supports the coal industry” which most people would take as support for Adani.

If this is not supporting the mine, what would they do to support it?