I mean, what else can you possibly make of this harebrained idea?
THE State Government is considering exporting millions of tonnes of high-polluting brown coal to developing nations under a plan championed by Energy Minister Peter Batchelor in a recent cabinet meeting.
As hundreds of people gather today in the Latrobe Valley to protest against Hazelwood, the state’s dirtiest brown coal power station, a new environmental battle is likely against the Brumby Government over use of the state’s massive coal reserves.
Government sources have told The Sunday Age that Mr Batchelor is supportive of an energy company’s 40-year proposal to export 12 million tonnes of brown coal annually to India. Mr Batchelor took the idea to cabinet’s policy and strategy committee recently.
As the story goes on to explain, Gippsland’s carboniferous mud, while providing cheap, dirty power to Victoria, has traditionally been impossible to export because its water content made it too costly (and dangerous, apparently) to transport. However, it’s new technology to the rescue! We may not be able to get CCS working any time soon, but, hey, we can dry off the coal to load it on to ships! Woohoo! Export dollars here we come!
Except, of course, brown coal is the most greenhouse-emitting source of energy known to humanity. While the coal-drying process will probably reduce this a little, as I understand things, it’s still going to be more damaging to the the environment than even the black coal that makes its way from New South Wales and Queensland to China and Japan. As the title implies, it’s the crack to northern Australia’s cocaine.
If a global climate deal that put hard limits – or, equivalently, a high enough price – on carbon emissions around the world had been signed, it wouldn’t be so crucial to specifically oppose this kind of insanity, because either CCS would have to be made to work or the project won’t be financially viable. But, at the moment, with a global deal of any form, let alone one that places a hard limit on emissions, looking uncertain, permitting brown coal exports to a country without domestic emissions limits would be environmental vandalism of the highest order.
Count me in at the protest line if this proposal goes anywhere.
“I mean, what else can you possibly make of this harebrained idea?”
Er, that selling coal is legal whereas selling crack is not, perhaps?
Yes, I realise that you were using a figure of speech to express your disapproval of the said legal trade. I am using a rhetorical question to express a view that, fortunately, the moral positions of posters on Larvatus Prodeo do not yet determine what can be legally exported from Australia.
In all seriousness, it is pretty silly to suggest that a problem deriving from the state of international negotiations over a carbon price can or should be solved by unilateral action in Australia this or any other project.
wozza2: I make an exception for brown coal.
Brown coal export is not an established industry. It’s new technology. If this technology weren’t around, the Indians would buy black coal (better) or gas (better still).
Until a carbon price is established, we should not be encouraging new industries that are way more polluting than the status quo.
Yes indeed, scandalous.
Mind you, developing a cocaine trade might be no bad thing …
Robert M
Just a small point: exporting brown coal went on for decades. It was dried. The items were called “briquettes”. A company called ‘Energy Brix’ exported some to Europe (and Asia I think). Partly to fill the sales hole, as more and more Victorians stopped using briquettes for home heating or industrial water heating (e.g. in hospital boilers). Seemingly not operating at present?
All of that before your time perhaps.
Uses of brown coal in fertiliser continues at low volumes: carboniferous mud
The coal-to-oil liquefaction process, investigated in detail by Japanese engineers at Morwell in the 1990s, is in mothballs for the time being.
Ambigulous: fair point about briquettes. But we’re talking about the bulk export of dried coal for use in power stations, which to my knowledge hasn’t been done before.
Coal-to-oil is the ugly sleeping giant of the energy sector. Let’s hope it stays sleeping long enough for electric cars to make it obsolete.
In the grand scheme of things, cocaine is less destructive, and probably less addictive than brown coal.
And why not? The whole state runs of proceeds of crime anyway. It aint called “Crown” casino for nothing.
A 40 year time frame, eh? It is clear that the whole proposal is predicated on the complete failure of any attempt to limit global emissions, because any serious post-Kyoto regime would quickly make this scheme uneconomic. The Indians wouldn’t have the carbon quotas to make it worthwhile.
And that is, IMO, the real danger. We’ve already seen how our black coal export industry pressured Australian governments to do what they could to sabotage Kyoto. There’ll be more such shenanigans if there’s a brand new dirty carbon export industry to the new players such as India.
Agreed, Robert.
Bulk export of dried coal is different. How would it be kept dry on the sea voyage? How much atmospheric moisture would it soak up on the trip?
Electric cars with solar p/v re-charging, I’d like to see that.
derrida
there’s an even stronger force at play in Victoria (the “Garden State”). Current (not future) industry. Huge brown coal fired electricity generation
*ru[i]ns*
this State. We’re already addicted.
Aluminium smelting. Mums’ & Dads’ home lighting and heating. Hospitals, schools, factories. Would you deny a pensioner his bar radiator on a cold day?
Marn Ferguson wants to protect our coal power stations. The Vic Govt wants to find other industries (Peter Batchelor spruiked fertiliser-from-brown-coal on last night’s TV news; this is not a new idea).
dd, for what it’s worth I very much doubt they’ll ever get the capital to build this.
Given that the banks are taking a hiding on the brown coal sector in Victoria already because of the threat of the CPRS, what would possess them to take similar risks again?
The good news is that the economics of drying and transporting brown coal sound a bit questionable. The bad news is that this is too often the trigger for governments to step in as lenders of fthe last resort. Hopefully all we are listening to is Vic politicians trying to avoid losing the brown coal vote.
As anyone got data on the amount of money states waste on competing with each other?
Coal is dead.. long live carboniferous mud.
Presumably any proposed exporters will be able to rely on the protection of Australian police officers.
I would keep powdered coal dry by transporting it in a dry nitrogen atmosphere, safer from fire and explosion too. Powdered carbon stuff is very very explosive if mixed with air.
Huggy
Personally, Huggybunny, I’d prefer to keep brown coal safe by keeping it in the ground…but, yes, you’re right. Inert gas would probably be a good way to keep it protected.