Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
China Spurs Coal-Price Surge
Shai Oster and Ann Davis, Wall Street Journal
Once-Huge Exporter Now Drains Supply; Repeat of Oil’s Rise?
—-
China is doing for coal what it once did for oil: pushing prices to new highs, adding more pressure to the creaking global economy.
China has long been a huge supplier of coal to itself and the rest of the world. But in the first half of last year, it imported more than it exported for the first time, setting off a near-doubling of most coal prices around the world. The capper came in late January when a winter of punishing snowstorms and power shortages led Beijing to suspend coal exports for at least two months.
Just since then, Asian prices have shot up an additional 34%. Last week, coal benchmarks hit all-time highs in the U.S., Europe and Asia. That’s adding to orries over global inflation already stoked by rising prices for everything from crude oil to cattle feed. “The velocity of the change has been remarkable,” says Thomas Hoffman, senior vice president for external affairs for U.S.-based coal supplier Consol Energy Inc., which he says is considering holding off on some commitments to supply coal to see if prices rise even further.
(12 February 2008)
Also at The Australian.
What are We Going to Do with All This Coal?
Craig Neilson, WorldChanging
The burning of coal currently generates more electricity worldwide than any other source, emits more carbon dioxide than cars, and produces radioactive waste with lots of heavy metals.
Its reputation as a dirty energy source is entirely deserved – the mining of coal leaks acids into waterways, destroys forested environments, and leaves nothing but a scar for future generations. It’s not energy-effective to refine coal, so its ashes include arsenic, methylmercury, barium and copper, it can cause acid rain, and yes, your city almost certainly runs on it.
I’m preaching to the converted here, but my recent interest has made me ask a new question: If it’s so rich in energy, so easy to access, and there’s 900 gigatonnes of it lying around –
What are we going to do with all this coal?
I wouldn’t be asking this if there wasn’t much of it – but that’s why there’s a question in the first place.
Counting it up and weighing it in is exactly the way of thinking that needs to change. It’s a thought-trap: If we’re not going to burn it all – not now and not ever – then does it matter how much of it there is at all? The perfect example of this is that we refer to “coal in the ground that we know about” as “reserves”.
A reserve is something kept back or saved for future use or special purpose. By calling coal (in the ground that we know about) “reserves”, we assume that we are going to be using it for something – maybe now, maybe later. We also make the assumption that we could burn it all now and the only thing we’d be spending is our savings.
…But if we’re not going to burn it, and we don’t know how to do anything else with it, what are we going to do with all this coal?
Leave it in the ground.
There’s a very good case for this option. If we leave it in the ground then we won’t have to worry about any of the terrible side-effects we currently do. But we rely on it for energy, so, whilst this ultimately needs to be the end-game, it might not be absolutely achievable in the next couple of decades.
Come off it slowly
By “slowly” I mean “quickly” over the next three decades. The world has plenty of abundant alternative sources of energy, and there are hundreds of creative ways to use the energy we generate more effectively.
(10 February 2008)
Coal mining plans put fresh water at risk
Leon Marshall, IOL (South Africa)
Plans to mine for coal in the catchment areas of major rivers present a serious threat to South Africa’s fresh water resources.
Acid pollution caused by coal mining has already destroyed the Wilge River that flows through the Ezemvelo Reserve near Bronkhorstpruit, Mpumalanga, and has caused mass deaths of fish and crocodiles at the Olifants River inlet to Loskop Dam, between Middelburg and Groblersdal.
Now proposals are on the table to mine in an area northwest of Ermelo, where the Vaal River originates. It is called the Spitzkop Greenfields Project and the prospective mining company is Xstrata, which owns several mines in the Mpumalanga highveld coal fields.
Professor Terence McCarthy of the school of geosciences at the University of the Witwatersrand has written to Xstrata’s consultants, warning that if the project goes ahead, it is likely that within a decade the water quality in the upper Vaal will deteriorate to the point where it will no longer be fit for human consumption.
(10 February 2008)
Mine expansion in middle of fight
Reclamation buries natural streams
James Bruggers, Louisvill Courier-Journal (Kentucky)
Giant earth-moving equipment groans under tons of rock that has been blasted from a mountainside at the Thunder Ridge mine to expose a seam of coal underneath.
The debris is being dumped in one of two hollows freshly scoured of trees and brush. Once the hollows are filled, they will be graded, planted with vegetation, and rocky riprap channels will replace the natural streams that once drained them.
Both hollow fills — also known as valley fills — are part of a mining method that is literally remaking the landscape of Appalachia. While some landowners are happy to see their property leveled off, environmentalists warn the headwaters that feed waterways that eventually reach the Ohio River and others are being irreparably damaged.
The Thunder Ridge mine is undergoing a planned 1.5-square-mile expansion that, since December, has become the newest front line in a national battle over mountaintop removal and other surface mining methods.
(11 February 2008)
