A very dirty business
My grandfather was a coal miner in the North of England, he died soon after he retired when I was quite young and my lasting memory of him was how he was constantly coughing up blood. This was about 55 years ago and the UK held no responsibility for the working conditions that killed him, in those days, it was just how it was. If you worked in the pits, there was a strong possibility, especially for my grandfather’s generation that you would not enjoy much of your retirement, coal really is that dirty.
The unions and the industry fought hard for improvements and they got them, over the next 20 years or so, coal mining in the UK became safer, more automated and, for most of the miners a tough but reasonably well-paid job.
Then the government got dirty; during the Thatcher years miners were considered too expensive; the National Union of Miners were considered too strong and there was cheaper coal to be found in far flung places. The coal industry in the UK was destroyed by the Thatcher government. From a peak of 228 million tons, the production of coal in the UK has now dropped to about 1 million tons. For the tens of thousands of miners and their families, it was a very dirty business indeed. It wasn’t that the UK didn’t need coal, at the time they did. It was just cheaper to import it from places as far away as Australia.
Coal in the UK is planned to be phased out over the next few years and that’s great news. Imports today are just a little over 2 million metric tons and these come from the US, Russia, Australia and a small amount from the EU.
China, on the other hand, still has huge productions of coal, according to one report, China’s production hit record levels with over 384 million tons produced in one month alone last year but even that wasn’t enough. China, as well as being the world’s largest coal producer, is the world’s largest user and therefore, the world’s largest importer of coal.
And by a long way, most of that coal comes from Indonesia, a lot comes from Russia and Mongolia and some comes from the United States and even Australia. Australia! Yes, this news will surprise many Australians but, coal is still being shipped from Australia Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, mistakenly stated in May this year that Australia’s largest market was China, but she was wrong, it’s now Japan but exports are still heading to China.
What will also surprise Australians are four other factors:
China never banned Australia’s coal, they stopped about 70 ships in October 2020 from unloading because the coal that was being delivered, was too dirty.
Australian coal exports were always scheduled to drop as China’s focus on carbon reduction increased and this was forecast by the ANU. So, despite media claims that China was deliberately hurting Australia in retaliation for some nasty comments from the PM at the time, it was really Australia ought to have been giving this situation more consideration and been better prepared for the eventuality.
China was only importing 2% of its overseas coal from Australia so for China, this was a minor hiccup but may have made much more of an impact on Australia’s smaller economy.
And finally, because the change happened quickly, China needed to find an alternate source and that source came from Australia’s supposed allies, the USA which took advantage and ramped up exports to China considerably, this is something the Australian’s probably didn’t read about, even if things were to get better between the two countries, its unlikely to improve Australia’s coal exports.
There’s a lot of criticism of the fact that China still uses so much coal, whenever people want to describe China badly or as the world’s leading polluter they mention the fact that China is still building coal stations and this is true. The complaints might have some merit but on closer examination there are a few considerations which might make the critics stop and think.
In their analysis of the future of the Australian coal industry the University of New South Wales points out that the real threat to Australian coal is not China, it’s global changes in coal usage. And, while China is indeed building coal power stations they are of a different type and the country closed 291 older style coal fired power stations between 2015 and 2019. China has also opened its first carbon capture storage facility and is building two more to open within the next 3 years.
It’s also well known that China is the world’s leader by significant margins in wind power, solar power, and most other renewables and the largest user of Electric Vehicles.
Over the next few years there will be considerable reductions in of coal globally and Australia is facing up to the fact that they will export less to every nation — including the 320,000 tons they currently send to the UK. The New South Wales government are already planning for this transition and the associated loss of jobs and revenue.
And this brings us to one final point: the reason China stopped those 70 ships with less than 10 million tons of coal on them, was not because China was angry with Scott Morrison; that’s something only the media would have us believe.
If we are to go back to 2015 we’ll find Australia’s own Institute for Energy Economics and Finance (IEEF) gave us the real the real reason. Australian coal is actually dirtier than its competitors.
As a direct result of massive pollution problems in places like Hebei province, in late 2020, according to Chen Hong, the Director of Australian Studies in East China Normal University, an environmental order was sent out to shut down or change operations. People did what was necessary and reduced reliance on the most polluting coal that was being imported. They reduced imports from Indonesia too but China only took 2% of all its imports from Australia. To China, what seemed an insignificant change was economy threatening to Australia.
And now another truth is out. A few days ago in Australia’s parliament, Andrew Wilkie, a politician who doesn’t buy into the Anti-China, or China bad narrative stepped up and told his fellow parliamentarians what China has always known. The Australian industry has lied for years about the fact that Australian coal is cleaner than its competitors and he produced thousands of pages to justify this statement.
The problem now is that the Australian coal industry has not only lied to China, it has lied to its own people, its own government and, as a result has embarrassed its parliamentarians into misleading the world with what they thought were facts about Australia’s clean coal but are in fact cover-ups about its dirty coal.
Coal may be a dirty product but this is a very dirty business indeed and this example is yet another example of China being proven right while Australia’s media, perhaps because they were duped by the industry have again, unnecessarily, stoked up tensions
