My new job has seen me doing some quite unusual work. Work that I am not familiar with, but has opened my eyes to a whole range of new issues in the global energy markets.
I like to rant a lot about Climate Change (and its effects) on this blog, but I am also not adverse to ranting a little about the other great crisis which I believe will face our generation - one related to energy security.
You may have heard in the news recently about cheap Indian cars which are supposedly to cost around $3000 and to make cars accessible to the population of India and will put millions of new cars on the road. People are concerned that all of these new cars will substantially increase air pollution and cause massive congestion.
Then (what didn't really make the papers), is the issue of how the cars will be made (and how the rest of the Indian economy will be supported in terms of energy) in the first place. India needs coal for its new coal fired power stations.
Another item you may have read in the papers is the BHP is now trying its luck in taking over Rio Tinto, the mining behemoth. Someone is trying to buy Rio Tinto! Its not only the sheer scale of the company being purchased that is a surprise, but the fact that someone is investing so heavily in mining expansion.
And it doesn't stop there. Countries all over the world are grabbing up energy (coal) reserves wherever they can at a rate of knots. India has trouble accessing much of its own coal reserve due to political unrest in some of the regions where the coalfields are prevalent. But it wont stop them from building as many new power stations as they can.
Australia (the largest exporter of coal in the world) is being inundated with Indian investors looking to avoid spot coal price and buy into Australian coal mines. Indonesia (another massive coal exporter) is trying to reduce its coal exports (to preserve its reserves) and China (the country with all of these massive natural reserves) has recently become a net coal importer which is probably something that a lot of people would be surprised to learn.
Australia is now struggling to get enough coal out the door to supply its Asian neighbours (due to bad weather and a lack of capacity at its ports) and all of these issues have algamated to double certain coal prices in the last few weeks.
What makes this all a big joke to me, is that there is Australia going all out preaching the good word about Climate change and signing up to Kyoto - and at the same time, it is desperately building new port capacity so that it can sell more and more coal to resource fast growing Asian states. The Australians (with 20% of export market share) have it within their power, to really get a grasp on Climate Change and just limit exports.
It took 20 years from the initial scientific proof of Climate Change to exist, before it really hit the newspaper headline hard and Western Countries even thought about doing something to counter it. I imagine it will take a good few years yet before people actually realise that we don't have enough energy to last forever.
I have to say that I have seen very little in the papers about the coal crises that are beneath our noses (apart from in my favorite publication - 'global coal')- so if this does hit the papers over the net few weeks, remember that you read it here first (just like the plastic beer bottles story, or the one about dodgy carbon abatement).
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5 comments:
"Global Coal" - I think they used to sell that at Nigel Hinchcliffes didn't they?
...ah Dan. I can always count on you to appreciate the gravity my point.
I was always a Charlesworths man myself.
Ahh well. Shit happens doesn’t it. Don't surprise me much as all governments only pretend to give a shit until they discover they can make some money out of it. The principals in the Kyoto are not worth shit unless you have the morality to abide by them.
It's all well and good to argue for limiting coal exports while the comforts of a major metropolitan center of a developed, modern economy (with a view from the living room of which I'm quite jealous, thank you very much); it's quite another to tell the Indians that they ought to be investing billions in solar instead of burning cheap coal for their energy needs, and so what if they can't afford to feed their kids.
Perhaps the comment on limiting coal exports was a little flippant. Though I don't think Australia (one of the countries most heavily impacted upon by climate change) has any moral obligation to export its natural reserves.
The truth is that I am not sure that there will be much in the way of really cheap coal over the next four or so years regardless of what Australia does.
In terms of India, if you want to talk of social impacts look no further than the huge impacts of smog and displacement of people from the creation of new coal plants. And it is the rich minority who are the winners from it all - not the people.
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