Home » Posts tagged 'coal' (Page 6)

Tag Archives: coal

It’s been a really bad week for major U.S. coal companies as we head into the July 4th holiday weekend.

St. Louis-based Peabody Energy (NYSE: BTU) closed today at $1.87 a share, down from a high of $84 per share in mid-2008. The company’s chief financial officer Michael C. Crews resigned abruptly on June 28 amidst the freefall.

Another major U.S. coal company, Alpha Natural Resources (NYSE: ANR) hit a new all-time low yesterday at just 27 cents per share, and sank as low as 24 cents that morning.

Arch Coal (NYSE: ACI) also hit its all-time low of 33 cents per share as well, down from its all-time high of $73.42 in 2008.

All three companies’ stock values are down roughly 80% from the beginning of 2015.

2015 year-to-date stock performance on the NYSE for Peabody (BTU), Arch (ACI) and Alpha (ANR). Source: Google Finance.

Arch has received a delisting notice from the New York Stock Exchange for falling below $1 per share, and has only a few months to regain its footing or lose its spot on the NYSE. Alpha received its own delisting notice a month prior.

Given the global nature of the coal industry and the generally complicated world of commodity trading, there are a myriad of influences at play here. But one cannot ignore the fact that these historic lows are coming at a time of historic commitments to renewable energy and carbon reductions by major coal-consuming and producing countries like the United States and China.

According to energy analysts at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), the Stowe Global Coal Index has lost 71% of its value since 2010:

stowe global coal index

IEEFA‘s director of finance, Tom Sanzillo, recently told reporters that, “the coal industry is arguably the poorest-performing sector in today’s global economy and is in a state of structural decline. It is a shrinking industry with little upside potential.”

That’s bad news for coal investors, but frankly it’s a welcome development for anyone concerned about the carbon

Are Coal, Oil and Gas the Subprime Assets of the Future?

June 25, 2015

Are Coal, Oil and Gas the Subprime Assets of the Future?

That question was actually asked by British Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Davey last year, and its ramifications are extensively explored in a provocative report released today by the Center for International Environmental Law, a Washington, D.C. think tank.

According to CIEL, the answer to Davey’s question is a resounding “yes.”

The report makes a compelling case that the three big financial rating agencies – Moody’s, Fitch and Standard & Poor – that gave clean bills of health to the toxic financial products that caused the 2008 worldwide financial meltdown are giving similarly bad advice to investors by rating fossil fuel investments without acknowledging climate change-related risk.

Along the way, the report, called “(Mis) Calculated Risk and Climate Change: Are Ratings Agencies Repeating Credit Crisis Mistakes?,” stresses the potentially enormous legal liability for the agencies if their ratings understate the pitfalls of what are likely to be severe climate impacts on oil, gas, and particularly coal companies.

Coal is not only the leading contributor to atmospheric CO2 levels, it is the most financially dangerous investment. Coal prices have plummeted. Between 2010 and 2014, three coal plants were delayed or scrapped for every one built. After being dropped from Standard and Poor’s 500 Index in September, Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private sector coal firm, was dropped from Standard & Poor’s MidCap Index today because its market cap has plunged from $3.9 billion to just $700 million.

Other recent developments have made the idea of stranded fossil fuel assets far more tangible. These have included the G-20 conference asking for an investigation into $6 trillion in planned fossil fuel extraction investments, the wholesale divestment from coal by the Norwegian Pension Fund, and the International Monetary Fund’s repeated calls for an end to fossil fuel subsidies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Renewable Energy Will Not Support Economic Growth

June 5, 2015

Renewable Energy Will Not Support Economic Growth

Container terminal image via shutterstock. Reproduced at Resilience.org with permission.

The world needs to end its dependence on fossil fuels as quickly as possible. That’s the only sane response to climate change, and to the economic dilemma of declining oil, coal, and gas resource quality and increasing extraction costs. The nuclear industry is on life support in most countries, so the future appears to lie mostly with solar and wind power. But can we transition to these renewable energy sources and continue using energy the way we do today? And can we maintain our growth-based consumer economy?

The answer to both questions is, probably not. Let’s survey four important sectors of the energy economy and tally up the opportunities and challenges.

The electricity sector: Solar and wind produce electricity, and the fuel is free. Moreover, the cost of electricity from these sources is declining. These are encouraging trends. However, intermittency (the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow) still poses barriers to high levels of solar-wind electricity market share. Grid managers can easily integrate small variable inputs; but eventually storage, capacity redundancy, and major grid overhauls will be necessary to balance inputs with loads as higher proportions of electricity come from uncontrollable sources. All of this will be expensive—increasingly so as solar-wind market penetration levels exceed roughly 60 percent. Some of the problems associated with integrating variable renewables into the grid are being worked out over time. But even if all these problems are eventually resolved, only about one-fifth of all final energy is consumed in the form of electricity; how about other forms and ways in which we use energy—will they be easier or harder to transition?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Revolution? More like a crawl

June 1, 2015

Revolution? More like a crawl

The energy visionary Vaclav Smil — Bill Gates’s favorite author — says that when our leaders promise quick energy transformations, they’re getting it very wrong.

America in 2015 finds itself almost in a new energy reality. It recently became the world’s second–largest extractor of crude oil, and since 2010 has been the leading producer of natural gas, whose abundant and inexpensive supply has been accelerating the retreat from coal as a national source of electric power.

Some see this as the beginning of an even bigger transition, one in which America’s dominant status as a producer of hydrocarbons ends its allies’ dependence on Russian gas and makes OPEC terminally irrelevant, while its entrepreneurial drive helps it quickly advance to harness renewables and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

All of this sounds too good to be true — and it is. Indefensible claims of imminent transformative breakthroughs are an unfortunately chronic ingredient of American energy debates.

When American leaders talk about energy transitions, they tend to sell them as something that can be accomplished in a matter of years. Al Gore, perhaps the country’s most prominent climate activist, proposed to “re-power” America, making its electricity carbon-free, within 10 years, calling the goal “achievable, affordable and transformative.” That was in 2008, when fossil fuels produced 71 percent of American electricity; last year 67 percent still came from burning fossil fuels.

President Barack Obama, who has a strong rhetorical dislike of oil — although kerosene distilled from it fuels the 747 that carries him to play golf in Hawaii — promised in his 2011 State of the Union message that the country would have 1 million electric cars by 2015. That goal was abandoned by the Department of Energy just two years later.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The senility of elites: coal mining must continue, no matter what the human costs

May 31, 2015

The senility of elites: coal mining must continue, no matter what the human costs

The coal mine of Bihar, India. Photo by Nitin Kirloskar

This post was inspired by a recent article about coal mining in India by David Rose in the Guardian about coal mining. In India, people are dying in the streets because of excessive heat caused by global warming, but Rose reports that “…across a broad range of Delhi politicians and policymakers there is near unanimity. There is, they say, simply no possibility that at this stage in its development India will agree to any form of emissions cap, let alone a cut.” In other words, coal mining must continue in the name of economic growth, no matter what the human costs.

I think it is hard to see a more evident example of the senility of the world’s elites. It is, unfortunately, not something that pertains only to India. Elites all over the world seem to be nearly totally blind to the desperate situation in which we all are.

On this matter, I have a post written on my “Chimeras” blog that describes how the blindness of the elites is not just typical of our times, but was the same at the time of the Roman Empire. It is a discussion of how one of the members of the Roman elite, Rutilius Namatianus, completely misunderstood the situation of the last years of the Empire. It is our plea of human being that we don’t understand collapse, not even when we live it.

The return home of Rutilius Namatianus

The 5th century saw the last gasps of the Western Roman Empire. Of those troubled times, we have only a few documents and images. Above, we can see one of the few surviving portraits of someone who lived in those times; Emperor Honorius, ruler of what was left of the Western Roman Empire from 395 to 423. His expression seems to be one of surprise, as if startled at seeing the disasters taking place during his reign.

At some moment during the first decades of the 5th century C.E., probably in 416, Rutilius Namatianus, a Roman patrician, left Rome – by then a shadow of its former glory – to take refuge in his possessions in Southern France. He left to us a report of his travel titled “De Reditu suo“, meaning “of his return” that we can still read today, almost complete.

Fifteen centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, we have in this document a precious source of information about a world that was ceasing to exist and that left so little to us. It is a report that can only make us wonder at how could it be that Namatianus got everything so badly wrong about what was happening to him and to the Roman Empire.

Continue reading on “Chimeras”

EU May Take Desperate Measures To Ensure Energy Security

May 30, 2015

EU May Take Desperate Measures To Ensure Energy Security

Oft forgotten and on the periphery of the European Union, the Balkans plus Ukraine may have a plan to address the energy needs of the economic bloc. It’s coal-heavy, borderline uneconomic, and arguably counterproductive to respective national agendas, but it does aim to satisfy some particularly topical pan-European goals: greater interconnection and greater energy security, i.e. reduced dependence on Russia.

Together, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Ukraine are planning to add nearly 15 gigawatts (GW) in coal-fired capacity – a figure equal to roughly 41 percent of the region’s existing capacity. More than 90 percent of the additions will come from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Ukraine, who will add 1.95, 2.85, and 8.9 GW respectively. Added electricity production is estimated at 49,902 gigawatthours (GWh). In 2013, the three countries – already net exporters – sold more than 21,260 GWh abroad.

In 2014, the EU-28 imported 380,234 GWh of electricity, up nearly 9 percent from the year before. So, if we assume all added electricity is exported – disregarding transmission and distribution losses – the Balkan/Ukrainian coal rush would account for just over 13 percent of current EU electric power imports. In terms of natural gas – and specifically gas used for electric power generation – the imports could displace approximately 14 billion cubic meters (bcm). For reference, Russia exported 146.6 bcm to Europe in 2014.

The coal build out won’t happen overnight, if at all, to the extent described above. Agreements and plans exist, but only one of the aforementioned coal-fired generation projects is currently under construction. If ambitions become reality across the board, a wave of stranded assets awaits.

Collectively known as the Energy Community, the contracting parties – the Balkans plus Ukraine and Moldova – have committed themselves to implementing relevant EU energy goals and frameworks. Put another way, it is the import of EU energy policy into non-EU countries.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Coal Is Doomed Even If It Wins Against EPA In Courts

May 20, 2015

Coal Is Doomed Even If It Wins Against EPA In Courts

The controversy over the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan has become the latest chapter in the chronicle of President Obama’s so-called ‘war on coal’. The plan promises many things, chief among them the health and climate benefits accrued by switching to cleaner burning fuels. But a case before the DC Circuit Court has the potential to derail the plan before it even comes into effect, with implications for US coal producers and the national clean energy debate.

The new regulations have their critics, led by coal companies and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R- KY), who has personally urged the nation’s 50 governors to ignore the rules. While this may seem like just another example of partisan politics, the latest case, if successful, could seriously curtail the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) powers. A victory for coal would be a blow for the environmental lobby and the federal government.

The dispute over the Clean Power Plan centers on its proposal to cut pollution from power plants by assigning tough emissions reductions targets on a state-by-state basis. The goal is to reduce carbon pollution from the power sector by 30 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels. Existing coal-fired plants, as the biggest polluters, will be the most affected. Opponents argue that the federal government is overreaching its regulatory authority prescribed under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. The EPA is expected to release the final rules midsummer this year.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Environmentalists Win Federal Lawsuit Over Colorado Coal Mines

May 19, 2015

Environmentalists Win Federal Lawsuit Over Colorado Coal Mines

Environmentalists won big May 8 in a lawsuit brought against the federal government over two coal mines near the northern Colorado town of Craig.

The nonprofit environmental group WildEarth Guardians sued the U.S. Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM), a bureau within the U.S.Department of the Interior, over permits granted in 2007 to expand the coal mines, saying OSM failed to seek public input or consider impacts on the environment when it approved expanding the mines. The mines are operated by Colowyo Coal Company and Trapper Mining, Inc.

In his May 8, 2015 ruling, Federal District Judge R. Brooke Jackson agreed with WildEarth Guardians that OSMcited outdated documents from the 1970s in its Finding of No Significant Impact for the mine expansions, and found the agency “did not comply with its most basic NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] duty of providing public notice” of the mining plan revisions.

The judge awarded WildEarth Guardians reasonable attorney’s fees and expenses incurred in bringing the lawsuit, and gave the two mining companies 120 days to “take a hard look at the direct and indirect environmental effects of the Colowyo mining plan revision,” and “provide public notice and an opportunity for public involvement before reaching its decisions.”

If the companies fail to complete these remedial tasks within the assigned 120-day window, they face closure of the mines.

The ruling follows a similar one in U.S. District Court in June of 2014 in which the Court found the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service wrongly approved expansion of the West Elk coal mine in Somerset, Colorado, because the company operating the mine, Arch Coal, failed to consider the social and economic impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from the mining.

The Latest Casualty In Energy’s Hardest Hit Industry

May 14, 2015

The Latest Casualty In Energy’s Hardest Hit Industry

Another coal company bites the dust. Again.

Patriot Coal, a miner of coal in several Appalachian states, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 12. Patriot said it is “in active negotiations for the sale of substantially all of the Company’s operating assets to a strategic partner.”

The move comes just a year and a half after the company emerged from its previous bankruptcy. At the time, some secured creditors received repayments, but shareholders bore the brunt of the restructuring.

The initial bankruptcy came as Patriot struggled with high costs during a downturn in the coal industry. But after the company came up with a restructuring plan that included a cut in labor costs and the closure of high-cost mines, Patriot thought it would rebound. But it wasn’t to be. As Taylor Kuykendall of SNL Energy notes, “Patriot was plagued by a union strike, infrastructure failures, fatal accidents and persistently weak coal markets that ultimately resulted in the company again filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.”

In one sense, the problems at Patriot Coal were unique to the company. It was originally a spin off from Peabody Energy, which unloaded healthcare liabilities onto the newfound Patriot Coal. That weighed down the company from the start, freeing Peabody from the costs. SNL’s Kuykendall chronicles a series of mishaps in 2014, from lawsuits for environmental damages to a series of safety accidents. Patriot’s CEO called it “one of the worst years in Patriot’s recent history.”

The poor performance affected output. In the first three months of this year, Patriot produced 4.1 million tons of coal, a 15.1 percent decline from the first quarter in 2014.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Much Would Zero Emissions Cost?

May 4, 2015

How Much Would Zero Emissions Cost?

In 2014 global carbon emissions totaled 32 gigatonnes (Gt). If you’re counting, that’s roughly 32 Gt too many. Yes, zero, near-zero, or net-zero is what we want, and soon is when we need it. Failure to achieve such goals by the end of the century will irreparably damage our planet and leave us dangerously susceptible to new and harsher climate conditions, at least according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The United Nations agrees, though several countries openly reject the target. Paris 2015 should produce some positive momentum, but anything legally binding is unlikely to materialize.

In an effort to better understand the zero goal, let’s try to put a price on it. More specifically – and for simplicity – how much would it cost for the world’s highest per capita emitter, the United States to achieve zero or near-zero emissions? To be clear, the following focuses on energy-related gas emissions, which are mostly CO2 and account for about 84 percent of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

Last year, US energy-related CO2 emissions were 5.4 Gt – relatively unchangedfrom the year before, though up 2.5 percent since 2012. By sector: electric power is responsible for roughly 38 percent of total emissions; transportation is second at 34 percent; and residential, commercial, and industry emissions account for 28 percent. By fuel: Petroleum is tops at 42 percent, followed by coal and natural gas at 32 and 26 percent respectively.

Of course, there is no simple solution to the problem at hand, but there is a simple idea: remove fossil fuels from the picture, and across all sectors. Note: that includes point-source systems equipped with carbon capture and storage, which – while not without their merit – are an unnecessary stopgap. It also means saying goodbye to petroleum-powered transportation as we know it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Much Water Does The Energy Sector Use?

April 14, 2015

How Much Water Does The Energy Sector Use?

Water and energy have a symbiotic relationship. Energy is needed to move water to people and businesses. Water, in turn, is necessary to produce energy.

Of course, different types of energy require varying levels of water use. Take electricity generation as an example. For the United States, electricity generationin 2014 came from the following sources: 38 percent from coal, 27 percent from natural gas, 19.5 percent from nuclear, 6 percent from hydropower, close to 7 percent from non-hydro renewables, and the remainder from a collection of smaller sources.

But those sources of electricity use water at very different rates. The chart below, using data from a new report from the U.S. Geological Survey, details how water intensive electricity generation is, measured in liters of water needed to generate one kilowatt-hour of electricity.

One significant factor that determines the ultimate volume of water a power plant needs is its cooling system. Most conventional power plants use either a “once-through” system or a cooling “tower.” A once-through system pulls water from a river or a lake, cycles the water through the power plant to help generate electricity, and then discharges it back into the environment. In contrast, a tower recirculates the water instead of discharging it. But towers end up using 30 to 70 percent more water because the water ends up being lost through evaporation, whereas the once-through system returns the water to the river or lake.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Dramatic UK Emission Drop Just a ‘Taste of What Could Be Achieved

March 27, 2015

Dramatic UK Emission Drop Just a ‘Taste of What Could Be Achieved

UK greenhouse gas emissions fell by 8.4 percent between 2013 and 2014, according to official figures released today by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Carbon emissions fell by 9.7 percent.

A 23 percent reduction in coal use and record warm temperatures were the main contributors to the decline in emissions. Continued falls in energy use were also a factor.

This dramatic drop in emissions is the largest on record for a growing UK economy. In fact, the economy grew faster in 2014 than it has in any year since 2007.

Economic Growth

It is extremely rare that emission reductions of more than 5 percent per year occur without an economic recession.

“This is further evidence, if it was needed, that efforts to cut carbon pollution and boost our economy can go hand in hand,” said Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace UK.

DECC’s figures follow recent estimates by the International Energy Agency that global CO2 emissions stalled in 2014 during a period of global economic growth. If confirmed, it would be the first time in 40 years when a growing global economy was not accompanied by rising emissions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A “Wave of Bankruptcies” About To Hit Coal Industry

March 20, 2015

A “Wave of Bankruptcies” About To Hit Coal Industry

The future for the coal industry is looking “increasingly bleak,” according to an investor’s note from Macquarie Research. The analysis firm also said that “a wave of bankruptcies” appear to be just over the horizon as coal mining companies deal with mounting debt and a shrinking market.

The coal markets have collapsed in spectacular fashion over the last few years due to a perfect storm of factors. U.S. coal producers first had to compete ferociously with shale gas in America’s electric power sector as fracking took off about a decade ago. That forced an array of coal plants to shut down as cheap gas washed over the country. Subsequently a regulatory crack down from the federal government – including forthcoming restrictions on greenhouse gases – further dimmed the growth prospects of coal.

But U.S. coal producers always had the international market, and exports stepped up in concert with falling domestic consumption. Now the foreign buyers are shrinking as well. China, the one country that the coal industry could count on for ceaseless growth in coal consumption, actually burned 2.9 percent less coal in 2014 than it did the year before.

When China, which consumes about as much coal as the rest of the world combined, sees its level of coal burning stay flat or even fall, that raises red flags for the entire industry.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Global Coal Boom Is Going Bust: Report

March 16, 2015

The Global Coal Boom Is Going Bust: Report

A new report by CoalSwarm and the Sierra Club provides compelling evidence that the death knell for the global coal boom might very well have rung some time between 2010 and 2012.

Based on data CoalSwarm compiled of every coal plant proposed worldwide for the past five years as part of its Global Coal Plant Tracker initiative, the report finds that for every coal plant that came online, plans for two other plants were put on hold or scrapped altogether.

The failure-to-completion rate was even higher, as much as 4 to 1, in Europe, South Asia, Latin America, and Africa, according to the report, which also says that the long decline in coal-fired energy production in the United States and the European Union can be expected to speed up in the near future.

“From 2003 to 2014, the amount of coal-fired generating capacity retired in the USand the EU exceeded new capacity by 22 percent. With most new capacity plans halted and large amounts of capacity slated for retirement, reductions in coal capacity are expected to accelerate.”
The CoalSwarm and Sierra Club researchers also found that there is very little money being invested in India to build new coal plants. In the past few years, there were six plants canceled for every plant built in the country, and that rate is not likely to slow down: “Although 69 GW (gigawatts) of capacity is still under construction due to a surge in construction starts prior to 2012,” they wrote, “less than 10 GW of new construction has started since mid-2012.” They cite popular opposition and coal supply issues for the fact that coal financing has dried up.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is China Exporting Its Pollution?

March 16, 2015

Is China Exporting Its Pollution?

China is in the midst of a historic transformation, and the surprising progress the country has made at energy efficiency has raised hopes that the world may get a grip on global greenhouse gas emissions much sooner than expected.

As a result of the progress China is making in cleaning up its industrial sector, global greenhouse gas emissions hit the pause button in 2014, the first time that has happened in four decades (absent a major economic contraction). The International Energy Agency said on March 13 that global greenhouse gas emissions hit 32.3 billion tons in 2014, the same level as the year before.

The shocking revelation that carbon emissions flat lined in 2014 was largely possible because of China’s ability to meet its growth target of 7.5 percent while keeping its greenhouse gas emissions flat.

The Chinese government has targeted pollution reduction as a top priority. It has set a ceiling on its coal consumption at 4.2 billion tons per year by 2020. Only a few short years ago that seemed laughably implausible, but China surprised the world when it reported that it actually saw coal consumption dip in 2014.

Cutting coal consumption fits neatly into the Chinese government’s apparent goal of shifting its economy from export-driven heavy industry, to a consumer economy. In practice, that means forcing the closure of dirty factories.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: coal

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Post navigation

Latest Posts