China and India will increase coal use by 700 million tons per year, more than all US production. Greta go strike in New Delhi …

11 June 20222 years ago babelfish

Greta Beaches. The post-Covid economic recovery and increased demand for electricity have led to a sharp rise in coal prices and demand. Since January, the reference price of coal in Newcastle has more than doubled . In addition, in recent weeks, China and India have announced plans to increase domestic coal production to a combined total of 700 million tons per year. Looking ahead, US coal production this year will amount to approximately 600 million tons . Here is the price of coal and its recent trend:

The surge in coal demand in China and India – as well as in the United States, where coal use increased 17% last year – demonstrates two things:

that electricity in the world, outside the EU, is produced with the least expensive source and in the quantity that is needed. Only here are we masochists;
it is much easier to talk about reducing emissions than to make significant cuts.

In April, China announced that it would increase coal production by 300 million tons this year. Last month, India said it plans to increase domestic coal production by more than 400 million tons by the end of next year.

If you add the 700 million tons of new coal that China and India will extract to current production, you get mind-boggling numbers. By the end of next year, China will produce about 4.4 billion tons of coal annually and India will extract about 1.2 billion. Adding up these figures, we get 5.6 billion tons of coal, or more than 9 times the amount of coal that will be mined in the United States this year.

About 140 years ago Thomas Edison used coal to power Lower Manhattan's first power plant. Coal persists because it can be used to produce the huge amounts of electricity that global consumers need at affordable prices. Indeed, the share of coal in global electricity production has remained around 35% since the mid-1980s.

In India, the push to produce more coal has led the government to grant a "special dispensation" to the Coal Ministry, which allows the agency to relax environmental controls and public consultations to allow mines to produce more coal. As one media outlet explained, the move came after the government "received a request from the Coal Ministry" stating that there is enormous pressure on the country's domestic coal supply and that everyone is doing efforts to meet the demand for coal for all sectors "".

John Hanekamp, a consultant to the St. Louis coal industry, told me last week that “Incremental coal production in India and China is exceeding the coal-fired generation capacity that has been withdrawn in the United States and Europe. Whatever the politicians thought they were achieving by getting rid of coal, they actually did nothing but raise the cost of energy , ”he said. “ We have not changed anything, except to make us poorer in energy “.

Whatever the European ESG policies, which count for nothing in the world, three points are clear:

in the next ten years the world demand for energy will be satisfied by fossil sources;
that coal is very far from disappearing, indeed it will probably be the king of stable energy production;
that the decisions of the EU are irrelevant in the world context, indeed the fact of wanting to produce energy from theoretically renewable sources, but practically incredibly expensive, will only lead to the economic and industrial decline of the West and its replacement by countries that there are far fewer scruples on the matter.

If we really wanted to abandon coal, the primary concern would be to supply energy that is both renewable and economically competitive on an international level, without foolish forcing that leads to nothing. Instead, the idea is to overturn economic laws on the basis of ideology. Unfortunately, dear Greta, I know that even if you step on your toes, you will not prevent China, India and other countries from producing the energy they need from the sources that are most convenient for them. If he really wanted to get anything serious, he had to strike for better scientific research or more nuclear energy. What he gets instead will be the opposite of what he asks for.

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The article China and India will increase coal use by 700 million tons per year, more than all US production. Greta go on strike in New Delhi… comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/cina-e-india-aumenteranno-luso-di-carbone-di-700-milioni-di-tonnellate-lanno-piu-di-tutta-la-produzione-usa-greta-vai-a-scioperare-a-nuova-delhi/ on Sat, 11 Jun 2022 09:00:38 +0000.