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UPDATE 1-Stanford University ending investments in coal companies – by Rory Carroll (Reuters India – May 7, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

May 7 (Reuters) – Stanford University said on Tuesday it will no longer use any of its $18.7 billion endowment to invest in coal mining companies, a move aimed at combating climate change that could influence college administrations elsewhere.

The university’s board of trustees agreed with recommendations from a panel of students, faculty, staff and alumni that found investments in alternatives to coal would be less harmful to the environment. The burning of coal for electricity is a major contributor to the output of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions globally.

The Stanford announcement is the most significant to date from a major, well-endowed college or university in the United States amid a growing movement by students around the country to pressure their institutions to divest from fossil fuels.

“The university’s review has concluded that coal is one of the most carbon-intensive methods of energy generation and that other sources can be readily substituted for it,” said Stanford President John Hennessy.

It was announced on the same day the White House released a report warning that climate change was already affecting the United States in the form of more severe droughts in some areas and more intense storms in others.

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Asian coal demand is set for robust revival, study says – by Brent Jang (Globe and Mail – May 5, 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.

SEATTLE — Global coal markets are depressed amid a supply glut, but reports of the commodity’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, a new study says.

Prices for thermal coal, a commodity used by power plants to generate electricity, fell recently to less than $75 (U.S.) a tonne, compared with $190 in mid-2008. And prices for metallurgical (or coking) coal, a key ingredient used in the production of steel, have tumbled to $120 a tonne, from $300 in late 2011.

Some industry observers have warned that there will be many more dark months ahead for the coal industry. But the long-term forecast calls for robust Asian demand, which should give producers hope, as long as they are able to ride out the tough times.

“Despite increasing environmental opposition to the use of coal, coal still plays a crucial role in the global energy mix and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future,” according to a study by Shoichi Itoh, senior analyst at the Tokyo-based Institute of Energy Economics. “The importance of coal use will be all the more important in Asia.”

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Mine Waste Transformed to Tap Water for 80,000 Consumers – by Firat Kayakiran, Randall Hackley and Kevin Crowley (Bloomberg News – May 2, 2014)

 http://www.bloomberg.com/

Anglo American Plc (AAL) was the first company to transform the wastewater from its coal mines into something 80,000 people drink. Now they’re seen as a model.

Purifying contaminated waters from three sites in South Africa has proven so successful that Anglo’s plant in Witbank is doubling in size and being replicated elsewhere in the country by BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP), the biggest mining company, and Glencore Xstrata Plc. (GLEN)

While the $130 million plant won’t upend the $600 billion world water industry, Anglo’s treatment center provides as much as 12 percent of the area’s municipal drinking supply and serves as a template for how the industry could treat waste in the future. It also shows how companies and municipalities are finding new ways to confront an increasingly water-stressed planet.

Water of a different sort — sewer water — is similarly about to be treated, purified and pumped back to residents in Wichita Falls, Texas, to augment shortages caused by growth and the area’s worst drought on record.

Mines often treat wastewater to some extent yet until the Emalahleni water-reclamation plant, 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of Johannesburg, none was of drinking quality.

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Eastern Ukrainian miners yearn for Russia, bygone Soviet era – by Kristina Jovanovski (Al Jazeera America – April 30, 2014)

http://america.aljazeera.com/

As crisis grips industrial Donetsk region, many workers dismiss politics but seek better living standards of yesteryear

SHAKHTARSK, Ukraine — Off a dirt road in the outskirts of this eastern Ukrainian town, Valeriy stands outside his house and cuddles his wife, Tanya. She wears a blue bathrobe and slippers, and Valeriy says the fading bruise high on her left cheek was caused by a fall at a party while they were both drunk.

Valeriy is a miner but has not been employed as one since completing his fifth prison sentence for theft. Previously, he risked his life working at an illegal coal mine in the Donetsk region, Ukraine’s industrial heartland now roiled by political unrest.

Despite the epic contest between forces, mostly Russian speakers aligned with Moscow against Ukrainian speakers loyal to Kyiv, he is more concerned with the daily struggle to get by and the desperate hope for some improvement in his life. Valeriy, who identifies as Russian, hopes for a better future if Donetsk becomes part of Russia — with a catch. “I don’t want it to be like Russia,” he says. “I want it to be like the past, the USSR.”

The future of the mines and the miners is at the center of the political battle being waged by pro-Russian separatists who have occupied public buildings and set up barricades in response to the overthrow of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in February.

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China’s war on smog will put the reins on global coal demand – by Jeff Rubin (Globe and Mail – April 24, 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.

China’s pollution epidemic has finally spurred the country’s leadership to declare a war on smog. It’s about time. Chinese citizens are angry about what’s going into their lungs, while a recent government report says pollution has left 16 per cent of the country’s land unfit for use.

Much of that pollution can be traced back to the billowing smoke stacks attached to China’s fleet of coal-fired power plants. If Beijing is indeed sincere about taking the fight to pollution, then these ageing plants will be on the front line. Global coal producers are already sitting up and taking notice.

China relies on coal for roughly three-quarters of its power generation. Its coal-fired power plants combust nearly as much coal as the rest of the world put together. Coal prices, for their part, are already tumbling in part due to a slowdown in China’s economic growth. Spot prices at Newcastle, Australia, the world’s largest thermal coal exporting terminal, have plunged from a monthly average high of $142 a tonne in January 2011 to $78 a tonne last month.

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Teck Resources Ltd to cut 600 jobs, warns current coal supply is ‘uneconomic’ – by Peter Koven (National Post – April 23, 2014)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

TORONTO – Steelmaking coal producers have started to slash production in response to lower prices, but Teck Resources Ltd. is warning that a lot more supply needs to be cut by high-cost rivals to bring the market into balance.

“Prices are currently at their lowest level since 2007, and margins are at their lowest level in 10 years,” chief executive Don Lindsay said on a conference call Tuesday. “We continue to be surprised there remains so much uneconomic coal supply on the market.”

Vancouver-based Teck announced on Tuesday that it will cut roughly 600 jobs as it tries to reduce costs and adapt to lower commodity prices, particularly for coal. The company’s realized coal price in the first quarter was US$131 a tonne; by comparison, Teck sold its steelmaking (or coking) coal for an average of US$257 a tonne in 2011.

The market has gotten even worse in recent weeks. The benchmark price for the second quarter is just US$120 a tonne, while spot prices have flirted with US$100.

Prices are falling because of concerns about rising production, slowing growth in China and the fact the Chinese government is closing some the country’s dirtiest steel mills to reduce air pollution.

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Globe in Ukraine: In a former mining town, nostalgia for Soviet era – by Mark MacKinnon (Globe and Mail – April 22, 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.

HORLIVKA, UKRAINE — You can smell Horlivka before you see it: the acrid output from the aging chemical plants and machinery factories that still limp along, though only at a fraction of the pace they once did.

Then you hit the jarring, metre-long potholes and get a glimpse of the city’s grim skyline of crumbling apartment blocks. The Soviet Union fell 23 years ago. Horlivka has kept falling ever since.

The next thing you sense in Horlivka is anger. Armed men have taken over the city’s main police station, and have built a wall of tires around it. Checkpoints flying the black-blue-and-red banner of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, often alongside the flag of the Russian Federation, block the roads into the city.

But residents of Horlivka and other parts of eastern Ukraine don’t really want to live in an independent Donetsk. In many ways, they don’t even want to live in today’s Russia, although there’s a lot of admiration for President Vladimir Putin here.

What they want is to go back in time, to when the Soviet Union still existed and Horlivka residents had jobs producing things that people in other places wanted to buy.

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Ludlow massacre spurred New Deal labor reforms – (Associated Press/Washington Post – April 18, 2014)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

DENVER — A century ago this Sunday, 11 children and two women died in a fire that followed a shootout between the Colorado National Guard and striking coal miners at a tent camp in southern Colorado.

What became known as the Ludlow Massacre quickly evolved into a national rallying cry for labor unions and eventually helped lead to New Deal labor reforms. But over the years, the tragedy has been largely forgotten, even among many in Colorado.

To mark the centennial, a Greek Orthodox Easter service will be held Sunday on the prairie where the women and children died on April 20, 1914. They had hidden in a dugout beneath the tent colony when the fire roared through the camp. The miners came from many countries; mining rules were posted in 27 languages. But most had joined fellow Greek strikers in celebrating Orthodox Easter the day before.

The United Mine Workers of America plans a May memorial at the site about three hours south of Denver with descendants of labor activist Mother Jones, who was jailed twice for refusing to stay away from the strike zone. The deaths at Ludlow came during a strike launched in September 1913 by miners whose living conditions were largely controlled by Colorado Fuel & Iron, owned by John D. Rockefeller Jr.

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Why the Great Wash U Sit-in Against Peabody Coal Matters: Which Side Are You on? – by Jeff Biggers (Huffington Post – April 16, 2014)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

Entering its second week, the inspiring Washington University sit-in against Peabody Energy has already gone beyond its goals to cut school ties with the St. Louis-based coal giant, and forced the rest of the nation to ask themselves an urgent question in an age of climate change and reckless strip mining ruin: Which side are you on?

Will other schools, alumni groups — and investors in Peabody Energy — follow the lead of the Washington U. students?

Case in point: Tonight in my native Saline County in southern Illinois, the county commissioners genuflected to short-term Peabody coal dollars over the “negative impact on about a dozen homeowners who live near the site of the proposed mine,” according to one cynical commissioner, and voted to allow the company to close off Rocky Branch road for a proposed strip mine expansion, despite the lack of EPA permits, and documented evidence of flooding, blasting and emergency access problems.

Facing financial ruin, grave heath problems and displacement, the Rocky Branch residents will fight on, thanks to the Wash U. students, and continue to tell the truth: We all live in the coalfields now, in this age of climate change, and it is no longer acceptable to allow anyone to be collateral damage to a disastrous energy policy.

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Price slump hits B.C. coal miners – by Brent Jang (Globe and Mail – April 16, 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.

VANCOUVER — A devastating price slump is hammering British Columbia’s coal sector as a U.S.-based company halts mining in the province while other players face mounting pressure.

Walter Energy Inc. highlighted the troubles Tuesday when it announced its decision to stop B.C. mining until coal prices recover.

Last week Virginia-based James River Coal Co. filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States, underscoring tough times in the global industry.

The coal industry has traditionally been a key driver of B.C.’s economy, with companies generating billions of dollars in revenue every year and employing thousands of workers. Now producers are starting to question the viability of their projects as prices hit new lows.

In 2011, coal prices soared to $300 (U.S.) a tonne. Prices for metallurgical coal have since tumbled to roughly $120 a tonne, hurt by ample new supplies from Australia, slower-than-forecast economic growth in China and a shift away from long-term coal pricing contracts that had provided some stability.

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Walter Energy idles Canadian mines as expensive acquisition comes back to haunt – by Peter Koven (National Post – April 16, 2014)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

TORONTO – A Canadian acquisition from three years ago continues to create headaches for U.S. coal miner Walter Energy Inc.

When Walter paid $3.3-billion in cash and stock for Vancouver-based Western Coal Corp., the company thought it was creating a dominant North American coal producer for years to come. The metallurgical coal market was red-hot, and Western provided Walter with one of the best production growth profiles in the industry.

Unfortunately for Walter, the deal has backfired in almost every conceivable way. Coal prices plummeted; the company ran into balance sheet problems; it ended up in a proxy fight with a former Western shareholder; and on Tuesday, Walter announced it will idle all the Canadian operations it bought in the Western transaction.

Walter has been eyeing a closure of its Canadian mines for months. But the tipping point came after a quarterly coal sales contract got settled around US$120 a tonne. The cash costs at Walter’s Canadian and U.K. operations were above US$132 in the quarter ending Dec. 31, meaning Walter would be bleeding cash if it kept these mines running.

“Our CEO said that we’re just as well served to leave the coal in the ground and wait for a time when the market conditions are better,” Walter spokesman Tom Hoffman said.

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News Release: Creating Cleaner Air in Ontario: Province Has Eliminated Coal-Fired Generation

April 15, 2014 5:00 a.m.Ministry of Energy

Ontario is now the first jurisdiction in North America to fully eliminate coal as a source of electricity generation. The Thunder Bay Generating Station, Ontario’s last remaining coal-fired facility, has burned its last supply of coal.

Operated by Ontario Power Generation, Thunder Bay Generating Station was the oldest coal-fired station in the province. The plant is scheduled to be converted to burn advanced biomass, a renewable fuel source. The province has replaced coal generation with a mix of emission-free electricity sources like nuclear, waterpower, wind and solar, along with lower-emission electricity sources like natural gas and biomass.

Ontario has fulfilled its commitment to end coal generation in advance of its target of the end of 2014. A coal-free electricity supply mix has led to a significant reduction in harmful emissions, as well as cleaner air and a healthier environment.

Providing clean, reliable and affordable power is part of the government’s economic plan that is creating jobs for today and tomorrow. The comprehensive plan and its six priorities focus on Ontario’s greatest strengths – its people and strategic partnerships.

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Coal sector muscles up to green activists – by Sarah-Jane Tasker (The Australian – April 14, 2014)

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

AUSTRALIA’S coal industry is hitting back at its vocal opponents and returning fire with the tools used by anti-coal activists as it steps up its campaign to gain support for the struggling sector.

The industry, which has ­increasingly become a target by activists determined to close coalmines, has taken the unusual step to publicly muscle up in its fight with the green movement and launch an active campaign.

The Minerals Council of Australia, backed by the world’s largest coalminers, such as BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Glencore, will today launch a website — Australians for coal — to give a voice to the sector.

Brendan Pearson, chief executive of the Minerals Council, said the website was an ­opportunity for the silent majority to have a say and not let what he says are the small number of noisy extremists get free air.

“A small number of fringe ­activist groups are doing their level best to undermine the sector,” he said.

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Renewables Aren’t Enough. Clean Coal Is the Future – by Charles C. Mann (Wired Magazine – March 25, 2014)

http://www.wired.com/

Proof that good things don’t always come in nice packages can be found by taking the fast train from Beijing to Tianjin and then driving to the coast. Tianjin, China’s third-biggest city, originated as Beijing’s port on the Yellow Sea. But in recent years Tianjin has reclaimed so much of its muddy, unstable shoreline that the city has effectively moved inland and a new, crazily active port has sprung up at the water’s edge.

In this hyper-industrialized zone, its highways choked with trucks, stand scores of factories and utility plants, each a mass of pipes, reactors, valves, vents, retorts, crackers, blowers, chimneys, and distillation towers—the sort of facility James Cameron might have lingered over, musing, on his way to film the climax of Terminator 2.

Among these edifices, just as big and almost as anonymous as its neighbors, is a structure called GreenGen, built by China Huaneng Group, a giant state-owned electric utility, in collaboration with half a dozen other firms, various branches of the Chinese government, and, importantly, Peabody Energy, a Missouri firm that is the world’s biggest private coal company.

By Western standards, GreenGen is a secretive place; weeks of repeated requests for interviews and a tour met with no reply.

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German coal industry underpins renewable push – by Richard Anderson (BBC News – April 9, 2014)

http://www.bbc.com/news/

Germany is an enlightened leader in the global battle to reduce CO2 emissions, a pioneer in renewable energy and community power projects and a champion of energy efficiency. Or so the common narrative goes.

But try telling that to Monika Schulz-Hopfner. She and her husband, along with 250 other residents of Atterwasch, a quiet village near the Polish border, face eviction from their home of 30 years to make way for the Janschwalde-Nord coal mine.

And not just any old coal, but lignite, the dirtiest form of this ancient fossil fuel that is mined in vast opencast pits. If the plans go ahead, the village, parts of which date back more than 700 years, will be demolished.

“Since the plans for the mine were unveiled in 2007, we have lived with this constant threat, which has taken over the lives of every individual and the community as a whole,” says Mrs Schulz-Hopfner. “Every single decision we make is affected by it.” And the residents of Atterwasch are not alone.

In the eastern German region of Lausitz, nine villages are under threat, where up to 3,000 people could lose their homes to make way for five new lignite mines that are fuelling the country’s renewed thirst for coal. Two further mines are under consideration.

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