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Federal resources minister hoorays Adani coal (and solar) jobs

Sophie Vorrath
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Australia’s minister for resources, Matt Canavan, kicked off his Monday morning socials by Tweeting a photo of seven different jobs being advertised in the newspaper by coal giant Adani.

In a show of support for the coal industry, for Adani and for the massive Carmichael coal mine and port project the Indian company is developing in Queensland’s Galilee Basin, Canavan captioned his photo of the job ads with “QLD needs this project and these jobs.”

Canavan has long been an enthusiastic supporter of the Adani and other coal mines in the Galilee Basin, and is apparently willing to offer financial support. Canavan is also minister responsible for northern Australia.

The Adani coal mine is the subject of huge controversy, and will likely be a touchstone for major demonstrations if and when it is developed. Former Greens leader Bob Brown on the weekend repeated his promise to lead a convoy of buses to protest the development if it occurs.

What Canavan fails to note in his Tweet is that one of those jobs is for a solar role, for a “senior project engineer renewables”. That is because, as well the coal mega-mine it plans for Australia, Adani has also identified 650MW of large-scale solar projects it wants to develop as it seeks to become one of the biggest renewable energy developers in the country.

Adani, as RenewEconomy revealed last year, has been scouting around for solar projects for more than a year, and earlier this year confirmed it was looking for solar projects in both Queensland and South Australia.

In a presentation at a mining conference in May, Adani identified for the first time the first four projects in its emerging portfolio – with two solar projects totaling 250MW in Queensland and two totaling 400MW in South Australia.

The solar projects are only likely to ahead if the Queensland government implements its 50 per cent renewable energy target, but Canavan has warned that such projects and targets would “kill” Queensland industry and risk major blackouts.

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17 responses to “Federal resources minister hoorays Adani coal (and solar) jobs”

  1. trackdaze Avatar
    trackdaze

    The only jobs adani coal will “create” if any are the ones it displaces from existing coal mines in and around central qld.

    Adani solar will be new additional jobs.

    1. NB Avatar
      NB

      just make your way calmly to Bob browns bus stop trackdaze. Lets hope they are all solar powered buses hey? 🙂

      I hate this Idea that the greyhairs are going to mobilize en-masse to stop this project. You’ve had your time, you’ve had your chance and choices.to make things better. My dad worked his whole life for Levers in the UK, producing all sorts from raw petroleum materials. He was the third generation in his family to work the exact same factory floor, since Queen Victoria was on the throne. they all paid with their health, but earned a good life and a comfortable retirement. 2 years into retirement he starts voting for the greens, and all based on complete ignorance. He believes the bs he’s fed through the left wing media. He read the news each day and became afraid. He like so many others are lifelong labour voters and haven’t sussed out that both labour and the greens are just the hardcore left with different shop fronts. No worse or better than the hard right. Equally committed to misery for all. Your generation chose progress above anything else. you landed on the moon. well done, and all off the back of fossil fuels. Now our generation has to pay for it with huge industries going to the wall, turmoil in our economy, No thanks old folk. whats good for the goose is good for the gander. As people who are now nothing more than a drain on the country you built it would do you well to give us youngsters every opportunity to (a) pay for the pensions you are all ‘entitled’ to, and (b) pay off the $1.5m it costs us to buy a 2 up and 2 downs that your paid 17 shillings for back in your prime. Either get a relevant opinion, or get lost.

      1. trackdaze Avatar
        trackdaze

        Growing Renewable energy jobs now exceed those coal.

        Thanks

        1. NB Avatar
          NB

          Thats great. Not even kidding, the growth in renewables is awesome. I’m all for it. I’m also for accepting the reality that coal will play a vital part of a cheap baseload energy mix for many years to come, in many parts of the world. A reality which you lot completely ignore, because it suits your cause.

          And what is the ‘thanks’ for?

          1. trackdaze Avatar
            trackdaze

            Adani just completed a 648megawatt solar plant in india in 8months! And understand in process of building a solar manufacturing business at gigawatt scale by 2018.

            How long has this carmichael thing been going?

          2. NB Avatar
            NB

            surely you appreciate the daftness of what you are saying? You are suggesting that the time its taken to get the project up is a direct reflection on the quality of the project, when he sole reason that its taken so long is the anti-coal campaigners abusing the court system.

          3. trackdaze Avatar
            trackdaze

            More so trouble with finance and a mountain of local indian coal.

          4. NB Avatar
            NB

            Finance and sovereign risk (by sovereign risk i mean the green left) in Australia seems to be a chicken and egg scenario wouldn’t you say? As for the mountain of Indian coal, please take the time (i’m assuming you are a retiree so you should have time between bowls games and pokies) to do some actual proper research on Indian coal deposits, their distribution, quality, ash values, chemistry and likely CFPS performance, then maybe you would be a bit less smug about that being a potential thorn in the side of Carmichael.

          5. john Avatar
            john

            NB what is going to happen is the very efficient RE producers will cause a lowering in the profitability of the old setup which is a problem.
            So to over come this problem what will happen is a totally integrated network with sufficient back up to account for any downside in generation in any particular sector.

            The old way the profitability of producers was set up was to make in 4 days a year a huge amount of money to make them revenue positive for the year.

            The new way is that high cost for a few days is going to be removed and the net outcome is a lowering in cost for everyone.
            Yes it means overbuilding however that is exactly what was the old system.

          6. NB Avatar
            NB

            I didn’t know you’d been to the future John. Luckily for the coal industry when you travelled forward to discover ‘what is going to happen’, you also alerted the Chinese authorities (oops) who looked at all their garbage poor quality inefficient coal producers and promptly shut them down for 1/3 of the year. So the structural decline argument of the anti coal groups received a satisfactory swift kick in the proverbials, and all because of you and your flux capacitor. But you know whats going to happen, so thats ok.

      2. John McKeon Avatar
        John McKeon

        Don’t agree with you, NB.
        … as the song goes, “The Dirty Fucking Hippies Were Right” …

        Renewables is the way to go, try it!!

        1. NB Avatar
          NB

          When you write ‘this old hippie’, the smugness just comes shining out of you John. Congratulations on living a great life full of peace, love and cheap electricity. You’re out Ipswich way right?. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. That town wouldn’t even be on a map without coal mining.

      3. Rob G Avatar
        Rob G

        You dad sounds like a smart man – hopefully you can follow in his footsteps and become a progressive thinker too.

        1. NB Avatar
          NB

          That’s what you are, a progressive thinker? What else do you do other than think progressively? I work and try to support a family. Not sure about you but I notice a bit of a correlation in the resources downturn and everything turning to crap for jobs and consumer confidence in Australia.

          I digress… Regarding my dad, he is not a smart man, and he would be the first to admit it. He was a f#*king hard worker and so am I, so who knows, I may end up walking his path after the financial shackles of modern life are removed. But he started his Green leaning tendencies about the same time as he started to refuse to drive in the city because it was a bit hectic. The same time he took his real steps back from the rat race. He became retired and bored and scared of stuff he wasn’t scared of before. But (and he’s my dad so you can’t argue with me on this) he does not understand the issues. I know this because I’ve discussed this with him at length. He thinks fracking involves explosives, he thinks they are ‘excavating’ the great barrier Reef to make a coal Port. I love him to bits but that is ignorance of the issues any way you slice it. How many of you reading this can honestly say you’ve looked at all sides of the arguments objectively?

  2. Rod Avatar
    Rod

    Anyone who believes the touted number of coal mining jobs and financial benefit would eventuate is a fool. Much of the equipment would be driverless.
    Look at how much money exporting all of our gas is bringing in. Zip, nada, nothing. In fact it is making our manufacturing less competitive by selling gas overseas for less than local prices. Without subsidies this project makes no sense at current coal prices.

    1. NB Avatar
      NB

      So exporting coal to take advantage of current high prices is a good thing then?

      Let’s pretend coal mines are doctors. With the right amount of doctors per capita the fees are fair. Plenty of doctors. System in balance. There is then a shortage of doctors because we have a bad flu season, and the prices go up to see the doctor because they are all so busy, a bunch of kids decide to work hard and train to be doctors at cheap universities so they can make a quick easy buck, they qualify but are not great doctors. They get a few customers and do ok for a while. The prices go down now because there are heaps of doctors, and natural market economics steps in and lowers the prices, although most of them are stupid and should never have been allowed to become doctors in the first place. People decide not to go to the crappy poorly trained doctor because, well why would you? The crappy doctors go and work at woolies, the good doctors carry on and everything balances out nicely again…until the next bad flu season!!!

      The former boring analogy was an attempt to explain the lack of substance in your argument of judging a commodity by the spot price of the day. A quality resource is a quality resource, and your attempt to deem Queensland’s gas resources unviable because they don’t quite measure up at the depicentre of a downturn in prices does not reflect one bit on how well these projects will do on average over long term commodity cycles.

  3. Rob G Avatar
    Rob G

    Sounds like Canavan’s got the blinkers on again, he has eyes only for coal. Surely if he was genuinely interested in jobs in Queensland he’d be backing solar. And that counts double as a National Party MP and representative of rural Australia. He ought to be looking to Port Augusta for agricultural inspiration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCup_B_RHM4 Ideology frequently blinds common sense.

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