10 December 2015, Renew Economy, Adani hits panic button over Carmichael coal mine. In a seemingly desperate move the billionaire chairman of Adani has announced that early in November he met the new Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and demanded legislation be passed to extinguish legal actions challenging the proposed Carmichael coal mine. On Saturday, a little over a month after his meeting with Turnbull, Gautam Adani complained to journalists that legal challenges against the $15 billion mine, railway and port project had caused banks to refuse to finance the project. “Ultimately, a decision lies with the politicians. They have to go to Parliament for enacting a special law which says that once government gives approval, no one can challenge it. That is what our request is to the Australian government. You come up with a special legislation which they have done in the past also,” Adani complained. “Even though there is no stay, because of the judicial review, no lender will finance the project. They do not know what will be the outcome,” Adani told journalists, including the Indian business news website LiveMint. Adani also bemoaned the dramatic slump in thermal coal process in the seaborne coal market. “In the meanwhile, coal prices have also slumped. We have to revive to the next cycle,” he said. Adani’s loneliness on display Adani’s comments, which reveal how isolated the company has become, are extraordinary for three reasons. Firstly, the fact that Adani has chosen to go public just over a month after the November 4 meeting suggests that Turnbull didn’t immediately accede to Adani’s demand to extinguish the legal rights. In other words, having failed with his behind-the-scenes lobbying, the company is now pinning its hopes on publicly pressing its case via comments to Indian journalists. Read more here
Tag Archives: coal
9 December 2015, Renew Economy, Paris, COP21: Australia digs in on fossil fuels, sees coal as solution to hunger. One of the big themes of the Paris climate talks has been the focus on renewable energy – wind and solar in particular – as a means to reach emission reduction pledges, and cut pollution in the cities. Australia’s Coalition government, however, is sticking to a familiar theme: it has invested heavily in fossil fuels with long-life assets it is keen to retain and, anyway, coal is still good for humanity. Foreign minister Julie Bishop used a forum hosted by Indonesia called “Pathways to a Sustainable Low Carbon and Climate Resilient Economy” to push the case for Australian fossil fuels. “Right now we are in a transition phase,” Bishop said. “Traditional energy sources, fossil fuels like coal, will remain a significant part of the global energy mix for the foreseeable future. “Barring some technological breakthrough fossil fuels will remain critical to promoting prosperity, growing economies and alleviating hunger for years to come.” Hunger? It seems a variation of the “coal is good for humanity” theme, despite repeated estimates by the likes of the IEA, the World Bank and others that suggest the needs of poor countries are probably best served by renewable energy. The comments yet again underline the disconnect between Australia’s apparent support for a global target of “well below 2°C” and its lack of policies to get its economy beyond the fossil fuel age – few renewables are being built and none of the major coal generators are being closed. Bishop suggested this would be the status quo. “It is a fact that energy is the mainstay of our respective countries’ export markets and underpins economic growth,” she said. “The capital stock and infrastructure we have in stock to create and supply energy, both fossil fuels and renewables, have long life spans.” So no early closures then. Read more here
5 December 2015, The Spectator, An age of climate realism is upon us. At last, cooler heads are prevailing….The Paris meeting is not even attempting to achieve what the 2009 Copenhagen summit failed to do: reach a legally binding treaty on cutting CO2 emissions. Instead, the aim is to replace the legally binding targets of the Kyoto Protocol (which runs out in 2020) with voluntary pledges tailored to the national considerations of individual countries. In short, the Paris climate deal will mean abandoning the notion of making decarbonisation legally binding — at least for the time being. Even so, governments from around the world are keen to sign an agreement that will allow political leaders to declare a victory, and to move on. At the same time, officials readily accept that painful decisions will be kicked into the long grass. Thus, the Paris accord is likely to be a ‘wait and see’ arrangement which, for the next decade at least, suspends any attempt of reaching a binding decarbonisation treaty. Such an outcome will almost certainly trigger a fundamental reassessment of Europe’s go-it-alone-no-matter-what-the-costs decarbonisation policies. Why has it proven impossible for such summits to make the kind of progress that was, until recently, billed as a matter of saving the world? Firstly, policies that commit western governments to unilateral decarbonisation have turned out to be more costly and politically toxic than conventional wisdom proclaimed. Rather than running out of fossil fuels — and thereby making renewable energy more competitive — the US shale revolution and the prospect of its global proliferation has triggered a glut of cheap oil and gas. Fuel prices have fallen and look set to remain low for the foreseeable future. As a result, the bridge to a world powered by renewable energy has become longer rather than shorter. Read More here Note that “the pause” noted in the article is a red herring – read more here
3 December 2015, Climate News Network, Coal plant plans raise climate risk. COP21: As some of the world’s political leaders strive to save the planet from overheating, others still see increased coal burning as the answer to their future energy needs. More than 2,400 coal power plants already under construction or planned will have to be cancelled if the planet is not to overheat by more than 2˚C, according to an analysis released at the COP21 climate summit in Paris. Even if existing plants are allowed to continue producing electricity beyond 2030 until the end of their technical lifetimes, the world will reach temperatures that risk runaway climate change, says the report by Climate Action Tracker (CAT). The report assessed the impact of planned new coal plants globally, and found that the several of the 28 European Union members states (EU28) planned to replace existing coal stations with new ones. The EU 28 and eight large countries assessed − China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, the Philippines and Turkey – that each plan to build new plants will together add nearly half the world’s total – 2,011 power stations. Plans undermined The report makes clear that the efforts of the 195 countries meeting in Paris to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will be undermined unless plans to replace old coal plants with new ones are scrapped. Read More here