Coal at a crossroads as ‘rational’ thinking sets in

What’s going on with coal? The new lows in demand for electricity from coal-fired power plants in Australia have people wondering if this is the carbon price doing its thing. That is what the Labor Party claims, releasing analysis today that shows power generated by coal power plants has fallen 14 per cent since the introduction of the carbon price, while renewable power has soared.

But there’s a lot more at work here than just the carbon price. According to a commodities special report released on Thursday by Deutsche Bank, what’s happening in Australia and in the global coal market is part of a major shift in rational decision making about energy supply and demand.

The report, Thermal Coal: Coal at a Crossroads, says coal markets face a combined threat of steadily growing supply in the largest producing regions and a levelling-off or decline in demand in consuming regions.

“We believe this trend will develop out of emissions control standards, higher renewables output, a structural shift in the Chinese economy, improved transport infrastructure, and stagnating US demand,” the report says. And it points to three of the world’s most important demand centers – China, Europe and the US – as containing “the seeds of a softening in demand growth.”

“As demand disappoints versus producer expectations, rational decision-making will require that major expansion projects be delayed,” Deutsche Bank says. The same kind of rational decision-making that has seen plans for more than 150 new coal-fired power plants cancelled in the US since the mid-2000s – and predictions that upwards of 200 coal-fired generating units will be retired across America in the coming years.

And the kind of rational thinking the Indian National Green Tribunal said was clearly missing when it granted environmental clearance for a 1,050MW – a decision it overturned last month, describing it as “smacking of non-application of mind.”

As Sierra Club’s Justin Guay points out, this is just the latest in a string of rulings by India’s NGT that strike at the heart of the nation’s proposal to dramatically expand its reliance on coal. But to understand the importance of the latest ruling, Guay says, it’s important to understand where the project was sited:

“Chattisgarh, along with neighboring Jharkhand, makes up the heart of Indian coal country. This is where India’s remaining forests, coal, and indigenous peoples combine to form a volatile mix. It’s also where opposition to the coal industry is so dangerous you can be murdered for it, even if you are a nun. It’s here that the coal industry assumed that plans for yet another big coal plant would hardly be noticed, let alone challenged.”

But in this case in India – as is also seen happening elsewhere around the world (even in Australia) – some brave locals turned anti-coal activists decided enough was enough, says Guay. “They took advantage of the fact that the NGT gives locals the right to challenge any project anywhere in the country on environmental grounds.”

Campaigns such as this, wrote Paul Gilding on RenewEconomy yesterday, “are the only thing likely to moderate the rude economic awakening we face when the global carbon bubble bursts and the fossil fuel industries start their inevitable and terminal decline” – a threat to which Australia is particularly exposed.

“Fortunately for Australia’s economics prospects,” Gilding says, “these green campaigns are amongst the most strategic and effective ones we’ve seen from the NGO community for many years. Unlike traditional environmental campaigns that tend to raise an issue and demand government intervention, these campaigns are displaying a more sophisticated approach, taking on the industry with a clear view of how markets work.”

And the markets, for coal, are not looking so good. In its report yesterday, Deutsche Bank wrote that, as a result of the combined threat facing coal, its base-case scenario forecasting coal prices out to 2020 assumes “only a very small increase in net new capacity, and leads to their “forecast of nominal prices of $95/t in 2015 and $101/t in 2020 on a FOB Newcastle basis. In 2013 real terms, these prices are $91/t and $85/t, respectively.”

Screen Shot 2013-05-10 at 11.21.04 AM

It does, however, concede that its base case scenario assumes “rational behaviour” on the part of producers, and that “there is still a risk that current plans for capacity expansion may be followed through to completion despite slow demand growth.” So they have also modelled a “bear case” as an alternative to their base case, in which global export potential exceeds import demand by 356mt in 2020.Screen Shot 2013-05-10 at 11.20.57 AM

 

Comments

3 responses to “Coal at a crossroads as ‘rational’ thinking sets in”

  1. Jason Dow Avatar

    When I read this stuff I simply don’t know what to think… take China for an example by 2020 total expected electricity demand is estimated to be 1800GW. Total wind and solar are going to supply 6% of this total. Coal is going nowhere but up, coal has a brilliant future under business as usual arrangements. Even with exponential increases in supply from renewable sources of energy coal is going to have to supply the Chinese, the American, the Indian , the Australian economy for decades to come…. the issues has always been the scale of the consumption that has to be transferred from fossil fuel sources to renewable sources and let’s not forget that over the decades the economies in questions to avoid collapse and society breakdown have to GROW! So even though i support the transformation under discussion I feel the pie in sky disconnected non reality based scenarios illustrated in this article are not doing the argument for change any good. The conversation has to focus on the core of the problem, growth itself, for without addressing this cultural, economic, political structural change we’re just farting against thunder

  2. Keith Avatar
    Keith

    Jason,
    So I guess you don’t believe China’s plans to cap coal use by 2015 as a prelude to decline? There is huge pressure because of pollution, with living in Beijing a serious health hazard.
    China’s expansion of solar & wind power is astonishing (100GW & 200GW by 2020 respectively), with wind planned for 1000GW by 2050.
    America has plans for 200 coal plants to be decommissioned.
    India has just stopped a 1GW coal plant in coal country and its plans for solar rollout are very ambitious. With more than 200 million people without power, India is on a different path which involves major local power generation.
    Coal is on the cusp of being unable to raise capital to build new plants. When this happens the change will be very fast as the assets will be stranded.

  3. Professor Ray Wills Avatar

    To add to Keith’s numbers below – according to new statistics from the China Electricity Council in 2012 in China thermal power use, which is predominantly coal, grew by only about 0.3%, an addition of roughly 12 terawatt hours (TWh) more electricity. In contrast, wind power production expanded by about 26 TWh bringing the total amount of wind power production in China to 100 TWh, surpassing China’s 98 TWh of nuclear power. While coal is still the key generation source – at the end of 2010, fossil fuelled capacity (mostly coal) reached 707 GWe – wind sources are now growing faster and contributing more to generation (not just capacity).

    Further, a chunk of China’s wind capacity is not online or has inadequate access to the grid meaning capacity numbers are there, but not contributing generation and not included in the numbers above – 2.8 TWh was not used in 2012 for this reason – this will soon be connected.

    Keith didn’t mention the short term numbers that get China to the mind boggling numbers for 2020 – China added 15 GWe of wind energy capacity in 2012 to at total of 77 GWe and 3 GWe of solar to 6.3 GWe. China has targets to add 18 GWe of wind and 10 GWe of solar in 2013.

    While China has built new capacity, China’s forced retirement of small inefficient coal-fired plants is often ignored: 26 GWe of these was closed in 2009 and 11 GWe in 2010, making 71 GWe closed since 2006, cutting annual coal consumption by about 82 million tonnes and annual carbon dioxide emissions by some 165 million tonnes.

    China’s installed capacity of nuclear power is expected to reach 40 GWe by 2015. The installed generating capacity of wind power is expected to reach 100 GWe by the end of 2015, and that of solar energy is expected to exceed 21 GWe.

    Main data source for above: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-A-F/China–Nuclear-Power/#.UYyFupVHmv8

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