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Merkel’s Taste for Coal to Upset $130 Billion Green Drive – by Julia Mengewein (Bloomberg News – September 22, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

When Germany kicked off its journey toward a system harnessing energy from wind and sun back in 2000, the goal was to protect the environment and build out climate-friendly power generation.

More than a decade later, Europe’s biggest economy is on course to miss its 2020 climate targets and greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants are virtually unchanged. Germany used coal, the dirtiest fuel, to generate 45 percent of its power last year, its highest level since 2007, as Chancellor Angela Merkel is phasing out nuclear in the wake of the Fukushima atomic accident in Japan three years ago.

The transition, dubbed the Energiewende, has so far added more than 100 billion euros ($134 billion) to the power bills of households, shop owners and small factories as renewable energy met a record 25 percent of demand last year. RWE AG (RWE), the nation’s biggest power producer, last year reported its first loss since 1949 as utility margins are getting squeezed because laws give green power priority to the grids.

“Despite the massive expansion of renewable energies, achieving key targets for the energy transition and climate protection by 2020 is no longer realistic,” said Thomas Vahlenkamp, a director at McKinsey & Co. in Dusseldorf, Germany, and an adviser to the industry for 21 years. “The government needs to improve the Energiewende so that the current disappointment doesn’t lead to permanent failure.”

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Philanthropies, including Rockefellers, and investors pledge $50 billion fossil fuel divestment (Reuters India – September 22, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

WASHINGTON – (Reuters) – The Rockefellers, who made their vast fortune on oil, and other philanthropies and high-wealth individuals on Monday will announce pledges to divest a total of $50 billion from fossil fuel investments.

The Global Divest-Invest coalition will announce new pledges and members one day before 120 heads of state address the United Nations on how their countries will contribute to a global effort to halt a dangerous rise in temperatures.

Since the divestment movement launched three years ago, some 650 individuals and 180 institutions, including 50 new foundations, which hold over $50 billion in total assets, pledged to divest from fossil fuels over five years using a variety of approaches.

One of the signatories is the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Stephen Heintz, an heir of Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, said the move to divest away from fossil fuels would be in line with his wishes.

“We are quite convinced that if he were alive today, as an astute businessman looking out to the future, he would be moving out of fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy,” Heintz said in a statement.

Since January 2014, commitments by campuses, churches, cities, states, hospitals, pension funds, and others in the United States and abroad doubled, from 74 to 180, according to philanthropic giving consultancy Arabella Advisors.

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Democrats Try To Stop Coal Industry From Swindling Sick Miners – by Dave Jamieson (Huffington Post – September 18, 2014)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/politics/

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats rolled out a plan Thursday that they said would make it harder for coal companies to cheat miners suffering from black lung disease out of the benefits they should be entitled to.

The bill, proposed by Sens. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), is designed to reform the legal system administering workers’ black lung claims so that lawyers and doctors working for the coal industry can’t game it so easily.

“We’ve seen in the last year the scourge of black lung and the tremendous difficulties miners have in claiming benefits,” Casey said on a call with reporters Thursday. “These hard-working miners and their families deserve much better.”

Among other measures, the legislation would require companies to fully disclose all the medical evidence in individual cases, ramp up criminal penalties for false statements by lawyers and doctors, and give miners better access to health assessments when companies dispute their claims.

The reforms directly address the findings of an investigative series published by the Center for Public Integrity last year. The stories by reporter Chris Hamby detailed how lawyers and doctors on the coal industry payroll have managed to defeat miners’ benefit claims by misdiagnosing illnesses and withholding critical evidence.

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Japan’s predicament a boon for future of energy exporters – by Brian Milner (Globe and Mail – September 18, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

This is another of an occasional series from The Globe and Mail’s Brian Milner, who visited Japan to assess the results of dramatic efforts to revitalize the world’s third-largest economy.

One commercial office building in Tokyo’s busy Uchisaiwaicho district is notable for its constant police presence. That’s because it’s the headquarters of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), provider of power to nearly 30 million people and one of Japan’s more reviled companies.

TEPCO gained its spot in the Hall of Shame over its dreadful handling of the Fukushima nuclear disaster triggered by the massive earthquake and tsunami in March, 2011, as well as subsequent revelations of poor maintenance and safety flaws and anger over the slow pace of compensation. Huge anti-nuclear demonstrations followed, and the public outcry has scarcely abated. As recently as its annual meeting in June, management had to fend off activist shareholders demanding a permanent end to nuclear power.

Now, a year since the complete shutdown of the rest of Japan’s 48 reactors for safety checks, those demands have taken on new urgency. The Nuclear Regulation Authority, the government’s watchdog, has given the green light for another utility, Kyushu Electric Power Co., to restart two reactors at its Sendai plant in southwestern Japan. Other utilities are seeking the go-ahead to turn another 18 reactors back on.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe needs to get at least part of the country’s substantial nuclear capacity back on line to cut a soaring energy import tab – including hefty government subsidies – that makes Japanese industry less competitive and presents one more obstacle to his recovery strategy.

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Colorado’s coal mining industry in dire straits as EPA rules tighten noose – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – September 18, 2014)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

DENVER, Colorado (miningweekly.com) – Colorado has been blessed with a bounty of minerals that has historically played a critical role in ensuring the state’s economic success; however, new legislative measures has cast doubt over the future stability of the region’s coal mining industry.

Increasingly strict legislation aimed at reducing the US’s reliance on coal-fired electricity was making residents nervous about impending rising electricity rates, as cheaper coal-fired power plants are forced to shut down in favour of more expensive sources of energy, while removing a critical prop that underpinned local economies.

COAL IN DISTRESS

In June, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) introduced its toughest action yet to cut down on carbon emissions, ordering a 30% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from power plants from 2005 levels by 2030, which did not augur well for struggling North American thermal coal producers, which had earlier this year expressed some optimism for recovering prices.

Under the direction of US President Barack Obama, the Clean Power Bill would be implemented through a state-federal partnership, under which states would identify a path forward using either current or new electricity production and pollution control policies to meet the programme’s proposed goals.

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COLUMN-China coal restrictions may have little impact on imports – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – September 17, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, Sept 17 (Reuters) – Who to believe? The traders and analysts who say China’s new regulations on coal quality is a body blow to Australian exports, or the companies and their association who say the impact will be insignificant.

In this case, it seems far more likely that the impact will be minimal, but not non-existent, as the new rules will lead to changes in the composition of coal China imports. A far bigger impact may come from the curbs on transporting low-quality domestic coal, which may actually boost imports.

In theory, the Chinese ban from the start of 2015 on coal imports above certain ash and sulphur contents appears to favour Indonesia, the world’s biggest shipper of thermal coal, over Australia, the world’s top exporter of metallurgical coal and number two for thermal coal.

China’s new rules aren’t uniform across the country, but for exporters, the most relevant is the ban on using coal with ash content higher than 16 percent and sulphur of 1 percent for cities in the southern Pearl River Delta, the eastern Yangtze River Delta and three northern cities including Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei.

The southeastern cities are biggest users of imported coal, given their distance from the bulk of China’s own coal output. The fear for Australian exporters is that 80 percent of the 54 million tonnes of thermal coal it exported to China in 2013 exceeded the new ash limit, according to consultants Wood Mackenzie.

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China ban on low-grade coal set to hit global miners – by Lucy Hornby, Jamie Smyth and Neil Hume (Financial Times – September 16, 2014)

http://www.ft.com/intl/markets/commodities

Beijing, Sydney and London – China’s top planning agency has banned the use of low-quality coal in a further effort to address the country’s problem with pollution and its growing glut of the fuel. The move comes as a blow to international miners already smarting from a steep drop in iron ore prices.

Huge new coal projects in the west of China combined with slower than expected growth in the east have already hit China’s coal imports, which for the first eight months of the year are 5 per cent lower than the same period last year. Prices have tumbled.

Australian thermal coal prices, the benchmark for Asia, have dropped more than 20 per cent this year, and could decline further as the door to China closes.

The National Development and Reform Commission said on Monday it would ban the burning of coal with ash content of more than 16 per cent or sulphur content of more than 1 per cent from 2015 in populous and prosperous eastern cities that are the focus of national efforts to fight air pollution.

That would, in effect, bar the import of lower-quality coal from Australia, Southern Africa and elsewhere, since the cities along the east coast are also the biggest consumers of imported seaborne coal.

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Miners face threat of coal ban – by Sarah-Jane Tasker (The Australian – September 15, 2014)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business

AUSTRALIA’S thermal coal miners, already struggling to turn a profit, could be further hit with an import ban on lower quality coal by China.

The price of thermal coal has come under renewed pressure amid fears that the economic powerhouse would implement quality-based restrictions on coal imports, which could impact ­almost half of Australia’s exports to the Asian giant.

Macquarie analyst Stefan ­Ljubisavljevic has outlined that while he remained sceptical that the proposed ban on high-ash, high-sulphur material would be enacted, on a “worst-case-scenario” basis it was Australia’s miners that would suffer.

The ban, proposed by the China National Coal Association and being scrutinised by the ­National Development and Reform Commission, would prohibit all coal imports above 15 per cent ash and 0.6 per cent sulphur.

“Based on Wood Mackenzie data, almost half of all Australian exportable thermal coal would not meet a 15 per cent ash and 0.6 per cent sulphur cut-off. As a result, implementation of this draft ban would, in our opinion, put at risk about 40 million tonnes per annum of Australian coal volume,” Mr Ljubi­savljevic said.

The Macquarie analyst said that if the ban was enacted, the best-case scenario for the thermal coal market would be that exports from Russia and Indonesia would simply be redirected to China from other destinations.

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China’s coal proposals leave some hope for exporters – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – September 11, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia – (Reuters) – When the best thing you can say about new policies is that they aren’t as bad as they could have been, then you know your industry is in deep trouble.

China’s proposed cap on coal consumption and ban on low-quality imports won’t have sparked celebrations among export-focused coal miners, but may have given them some hope that the world’s top importer of the fuel will remain open for business.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, on Tuesday published a draft version of a law to tighten air pollution control by cutting the use of coal, which is used to generate about 80 percent of the nation’s electricity.

The draft didn’t spell out exactly what the consumption cap would be, nor the quality standards that would be imposed on imported fuel.

However, industry sources say the recommendation from the National Energy Administration is that coal with a sulfur content of more than 0.6 percent and ash content of more than 15 percent be banned.

What is also interesting to note is that the proposed import ban doesn’t specify heating value, meaning low-calorific coal could still be shipped in as long as it has low ash and sulfur.

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[Nanaimo] City’s south is steeped in history – by Lynne Bowen (Nanaimo Daily News – September 11, 2014)

http://www.nanaimodailynews.com/

Mining families lived in small houses and grew their own food, single men found in boarding houses

Excerpt From Lynne Bowen’s essay: Thinking Back, from the forthcoming publication for Black Diamond Dust.

Lynne Bowen is an award winning Nanaimo-based historian and author known for her landmark 1982 book ‘Boss Whistle: The Coal Miners of Vancouver Island Remember,’ and six other important books about British Columbia history.

Haliburton Street was the most important thoroughfare in the South End. Mining families lived there or on the streets above and below it; single men lived in the boarding houses that clustered around the corner nearest the pub where the day shift miners, except those who were teetotal, drank beer after work.

In a town where all the important streets and avenues were named after English coal company directors, it was fitting that the main thoroughfare of the South End, where the biggest mine in British Columbia drew coal from under the harbour, was named after the best known among the directors.

Thomas Chandler Haliburton had lived most of his life in Nova Scotia, but had moved to Britain when he retired. Although he had been a judge and a politician on both sides of the Atlantic, posterity knows him best as the creator of the Sam Slick satirical sketches, which made him a bestselling author in Nova Scotia, Great Britain and the United States.

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Indian power station coal stocks lowest since 2012 blackouts – by Krishna N Das and Douglas Busvine (Reuters India – August 29, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

NEW DELHI – (Reuters) – Half of India’s thermal power stations have less than a week’s supply of coal on hand, according to weekly data, the lowest level since mid-2012 when hundreds of millions of people were cut off in one of the world’s worst blackouts.

There was a sharp fall in power output on Thursday from a plant in Gujarat that left India more than 9,000 megawatts short of peak demand, according to two officials at the state grid operator.

Any grid collapse would cast doubt on the crisis management skills of the new government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose achievement in ensuring 24-hour power supplies as premier of Gujarat helped him to election victory in May.

Commenting on Thursday, Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal said: “I don’t know about the possibility of a breakdown … There is a problem, I think, with many of the coal supplies.”

The shortage has come about as a fall in hydroelectricty generation due to weak monsoon rains forced the government to ask coal-based power stations to raise output, an industry source said.

India suffered unprecedented power cuts on July 30-31, 2012, that affected 620 million people – nearly a tenth of the world’s population – in 22 states across the north and east of the country.

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ANALYSIS-India’s coal crunch – a chance to revamp, reallocate and revive – by Krishna N Das and Abhishek Vishnoi (Reuters India – August 27, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI, Aug 27 (Reuters) – A court ruling this week that India’s decades-old method of granting coal mining concessions is illegal could herald much-needed reforms in a sector long dogged by the inability of state-run Coal India to raise output fast enough.

In declaring scores of coal block allocations made since 1993 unlawful and arbitrary, the Supreme Court has put investments worth billions of dollars at risk.

If it goes the next step and cancels the concessions after a further hearing due to start on Monday, India may have to import vast amounts of coal to keep the lights on.

In the long run, however, the decision could bring clearer rules to a sector that has failed to provide India with enough power because it has been so hamstrung by confusion and scandals over concessions allegedly handed to government cronies.

Coal India has a monopoly over coal that is mined for sale. The scandal, dubbed “Coalgate” by the media, concerns concessions sold to steel, cement and power firms to dig up coal for their own use.

The furore erupted after a federal auditor’s report in 2012 found that underpriced sales had cost the exchequer as much as $33 billion.

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China steel output growth doesn’t gel with coking coal – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – August 25, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

Clyde Russell is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own.

LAUNCESTON, Australia – Aug 25 (Reuters) – Something doesn’t quite add up with China’s rising steel production, but falling coal output and imports so far this year.

China’s raw steel output was 480.76 million tonnes in the first seven months of 2014, up 2.7 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

However, imports of metallurgical, or coking, coal used to make steel were down 12.6 percent to 36.01 million tonnes in the first seven months of the year, according to customs data.

Given that imports only meet roughly 10 percent of China’s coking coal needs, it’s essential to look at domestic coal output.

Total coal production in China in the first seven months of the year was 2.163 billion tonnes, a decline of 1.45 percent on the same period in 2013, with July’s output down 1.63 percent from the same month last year, according to data from the China Coal Transport and Distribution Association.

What isn’t clear is the breakdown of thermal to coking coal within those broader production figures.

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Port authority OKs controversial coal-shipping facility in Metro Vancouver – by Steven Chua (Canadian Press/Canadian Business Magazine – August 21, 2014)

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/

VANCOUVER – Port Metro Vancouver approved Thursday construction of a controversial coal-shipping facility on the Fraser River, over concerns from local medical health officers and area residents about air quality and the environment.

Fraser Surrey Docks was granted a permit to build the facility to handle four-million metric tonnes of coal from the U.S. Midwest each year.

Peter Xotta, vice-president of planning and operations at the port authority, said the decision was not made lightly. “We have required extensive analysis,” said Xotta. The permit decision brings to an end a process that has dragged on for almost two years.

Concerns focus mainly on the effects of coal dust on air quality and the impact on the region. Global climate change also came into play in the drawn-out debate.

Fraser Surrey Docks hired SNC Lavalin to review the proposal, and the resulting report concluded there would be no significant adverse effects to the environment or people’s health.

But in a letter last November to the company, the chief medical health officers for the Fraser and Vancouver Coastal Health authorities dismissed the report’s findings.

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When coal was king: Drumheller’s Atlas coal mine takes visitors back in time – by Karan Smith (Canadian Geolgraphic Travel – Summer 2014)

http://travelclub.canadiangeographic.ca/

TWO. ONE.” CLICK. We all turn off our headlamps. And it’s dark in here. Really dark. I reach for my daughter’s hand. Above our heads is 12 metres of earth; ahead of us, the mouth of the mine. We’re walking up the angled ramp of the underground gantry in the Atlas coal mine. Alongside us is the wide rubberized canvas belt that once carried the chunks of coal shovelled out of the mine, in East Coulee, Alta., to homes across Canada.

As we click our lights back on, our guide, Chelsea Saltys, an area local and engineering student, tells the story of a young miner named Eric Houghton, who slipped one rainy day on the wet links between the coal cars. He fell underneath the moving train and was severely hurt: broken hip and leg, punctured lung, crushed ribs. After a shot of morphine and a cigarette, he made it to the hospital, then spent months in traction. When he got out of the hospital, he got a job at the Banff Springs Hotel as a night watchman. Physiotherapy was climbing the stairs at the grand resort. But the black gold called him back and he returned for his old job. “It goes to show you what these men were made of,” says Saltys.

THERE’S A KIND OF DESOLATE BEAUTY that comes with abandoned towns. Driving along the hoodoo-lined highway to the Atlas coal mine, the eight-storey wooden tipple, once used to load coal into railway cars, stands out as a landmark. It’s the last wooden tipple in Canada and a national historic site.

(You might have seen it on last summer’s Amazing Race Canada, where contestants competed to load a two-tonne coal car.) On the site, rusting trucks from the 1940s are permanently parked. A narrow gauge track runs in front, evidence of the railway’s role here.

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