The World’s Largest Coal Mining Company Is Closing 37 Sites

Coal is dead, worldwide...


https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzqdme/the-worlds-largest-coal-mining-company-is-closing-37-sites

The World’s Largest Coal Mining Company Is Closing 37 Sites
Ankita Rao

Ankita Rao

Jun 23 2017, 12:52pm

As solar energy becomes cheaper than coal, India’s growth will depend on renewables.

Coal India—a government-back coal company–is reportedly closing 37 of its "unviable" mines in the next year to cut back on losses.

India is primed for an energy revolution. The country's ongoing economic growth has been powered by fossil fuels in the past, making it one of the top five largest energy consumers in the world. But it has also invested heavily in renewables, and the cost of solar power is now cheaper than ever. In some instances, villages in India have avoided coal-powered electricity altogether, and "leapfrogged" straight to solar power.

Partly because of this shift, Coal India, which produced 554.13 million tonnes of coal in the 2016-2017 fiscal year (for comparison, the largest company in the US produced about 175 million in 2015) saw demand dip in recent months. This is not the first sign that coal is no longer the most economic option for emerging economies like India and China. Earlier this year, the heavily industrial state of Gujarat cancelled its proposed coal power plants. And a few weeks ago The Hindu reported that Coal India had identified another 65 mines in losses.

India's energy situation is changing so fast that even expert predictions about its switch to renewables are wildly off: A study from last year claimed India would be building more than 300 coal plants in the next 10 years, but experts said the data was already outdated by the time the report was published, and that India would be moving toward renewables instead.

It sucks for all the miners who depended on these jobs. I mean that. But coal is becoming a dinosaur. Time to move into the 21st century economy, and there isn't much place there for coal.

beefheart said:

Coal is dead, worldwide...


https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzqdme/the-worlds-largest-coal-mining-company-is-closing-37-sites

The World’s Largest Coal Mining Company Is Closing 37 Sites
Ankita Rao

Ankita Rao

Jun 23 2017, 12:52pm

As solar energy becomes cheaper than coal, India’s growth will depend on renewables.

Coal India—a government-back coal company–is reportedly closing 37 of its "unviable" mines in the next year to cut back on losses.

India is primed for an energy revolution. The country's ongoing economic growth has been powered by fossil fuels in the past, making it one of the top five largest energy consumers in the world. But it has also invested heavily in renewables, and the cost of solar power is now cheaper than ever. In some instances, villages in India have avoided coal-powered electricity altogether, and "leapfrogged" straight to solar power.

Partly because of this shift, Coal India, which produced 554.13 million tonnes of coal in the 2016-2017 fiscal year (for comparison, the largest company in the US produced about 175 million in 2015) saw demand dip in recent months. This is not the first sign that coal is no longer the most economic option for emerging economies like India and China. Earlier this year, the heavily industrial state of Gujarat cancelled its proposed coal power plants. And a few weeks ago The Hindu reported that Coal India had identified another 65 mines in losses.

India's energy situation is changing so fast that even expert predictions about its switch to renewables are wildly off: A study from last year claimed India would be building more than 300 coal plants in the next 10 years, but experts said the data was already outdated by the time the report was published, and that India would be moving toward renewables instead.

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Of course investment goes, where the taxpayer subsidises it or givernment forces prices to consumers up. That is natural.

in most cases it just isn't economical to do old fashioned mining. In Germany mines are still in operation but they are strip mines and just dig up whole landmasses in order to find coal just feet below the surface, a few employees is enough to run an huge mining operation.

Old fashioned coal mines are dangerous and not cost effective in countries where wages are high/Western countries.

That Trump went all in for the coal miners is a cynical play to fool miners into thinking things are only going to get better. But it isn't, non-polluting energy is the future and for all regular fossil fuel needs we have oil and gas (which can be fracked much cheaper than oil can be dug up) which also are not as polluting as oil.

This is the way of the future, coal mines will close more and more. Just like they did in the region where I live in the mid seventies/early eighties. Just like in the UK where coal mining is a thing of the past.

joG said:

Of course investment goes, where the taxpayer subsidises it or givernment forces prices to consumers up. That is natural.

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It's completely irrelevant whether there are subsidies for everything else (like oil) or not, coal is a dying technology and the companies that still do mine coal have a dozen people with heavy equipment chopping off tops of mountains, it's not thousands of workers with head lamps chopping away with pick axes. Even if we got 100% of our energy from coal, the number of jobs required would be miniscule. Technology changes and so does society.

RabidAlpaca said:

It's completely irrelevant whether there are subsidies for everything else (like oil) or not, coal is a dying technology and the companies that still do mine coal have a dozen people with heavy equipment chopping off tops of mountains, it's not thousands of workers with head lamps chopping away with pick axes. Even if we got 100% of our energy from coal, the number of jobs required would be miniscule. Technology changes and so does society.

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My grandfather was a coal miner, and the coal mine killed him due to all the dust and unhealthy conditions inside the mine. He had coal dust on his lungs for years and it destroyed his ability to breathe properly. That was the legacy of coal mining in the Netherlands and here you have proper health care so he and his fellow miners got good care until they in the end died (usually horrendously) due to suffocating in their own bodies.

Coal sucks, period.

Phys251 said:

It sucks for all the miners who depended on these jobs. I mean that. But coal is becoming a dinosaur. Time to move into the 21st century economy, and there isn't much place there for coal.

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Either the coal companies or Donald Trump seem to care about the coal workers.

Take for example the fact that executives of a bankrupt coal company got millions in bonuses while medical and life insurance benefits were cut for thousands of workers.

Judge approves Alpha Natural Resources bonuses; retiree benefits hearing continued | Energy Journal | trib.com

Or think how the coal CEO Blankenship could get millions in a golden parachute after doing his job so badly, that he was sentenced to one year in jail for his contribution to an accident that left 29 coal workers dead.

A Golden Parachute For Don Blankenship of Massey Energy - ABC News

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...-don-blankenship-prison-upper-big-branch-mine

While Donald Trump cut back on program that could help coal workers get new jobs.

beefheart said:

Coal is dead, worldwide...


https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzqdme/the-worlds-largest-coal-mining-company-is-closing-37-sites

The World’s Largest Coal Mining Company Is Closing 37 Sites
Ankita Rao

Ankita Rao

Jun 23 2017, 12:52pm

As solar energy becomes cheaper than coal, India’s growth will depend on renewables.

Coal India—a government-back coal company–is reportedly closing 37 of its "unviable" mines in the next year to cut back on losses.

India is primed for an energy revolution. The country's ongoing economic growth has been powered by fossil fuels in the past, making it one of the top five largest energy consumers in the world. But it has also invested heavily in renewables, and the cost of solar power is now cheaper than ever. In some instances, villages in India have avoided coal-powered electricity altogether, and "leapfrogged" straight to solar power.

Partly because of this shift, Coal India, which produced 554.13 million tonnes of coal in the 2016-2017 fiscal year (for comparison, the largest company in the US produced about 175 million in 2015) saw demand dip in recent months. This is not the first sign that coal is no longer the most economic option for emerging economies like India and China. Earlier this year, the heavily industrial state of Gujarat cancelled its proposed coal power plants. And a few weeks ago The Hindu reported that Coal India had identified another 65 mines in losses.

India's energy situation is changing so fast that even expert predictions about its switch to renewables are wildly off: A study from last year claimed India would be building more than 300 coal plants in the next 10 years, but experts said the data was already outdated by the time the report was published, and that India would be moving toward renewables instead.

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Why are they continuing to build so many coal fired plants?

https://phys.org/news/2017-04-india-coal-conflict-climate-commitments.html

Phys251 said:

It sucks for all the miners who depended on these jobs. I mean that. But coal is becoming a dinosaur. Time to move into the 21st century economy, and there isn't much place there for coal.

Click to expand...

So it went full cycle? Yep time to retire.

Well, considering they have well over 400 mines, this can be expected. Over the years, mining is becoming more and more efficient!

This isn't necessarily a win against coal.

code1211 said:

Why are they continuing to build so many coal fired plants?

https://phys.org/news/2017-04-india-coal-conflict-climate-commitments.html

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India’s energy production today is very low per capita. So, India have been the last great hope for coal, with the idea that India will solve its enormous energy need with coal power. Now it instead seems like they will mostly accomplish it with renewable energy.

A draft 10-year energy blueprint published this week predicts that 57% of India’s total electricity capacity will come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2027. The Paris climate accord target was 40% by 2030.

The forecast reflects an increase in private sector investment in Indian renewable energy projects over the past year, according to analysts.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/21/india-renewable-energy-paris-climate-summit-target

That at the same time India continue to cancel plans for coal power plants.

India cancels plans for huge coal power stations as solar energy prices hit record low | The Independent

While globally demand for coal falls in second year in a row.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...and-falls-2016-second-year-in-row-fossil-fuel

beefheart said:

Coal is dead, worldwide...


https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzqdme/the-worlds-largest-coal-mining-company-is-closing-37-sites

The World’s Largest Coal Mining Company Is Closing 37 Sites
Ankita Rao

Ankita Rao

Jun 23 2017, 12:52pm

As solar energy becomes cheaper than coal, India’s growth will depend on renewables.

Coal India—a government-back coal company–is reportedly closing 37 of its "unviable" mines in the next year to cut back on losses.

India is primed for an energy revolution. The country's ongoing economic growth has been powered by fossil fuels in the past, making it one of the top five largest energy consumers in the world. But it has also invested heavily in renewables, and the cost of solar power is now cheaper than ever. In some instances, villages in India have avoided coal-powered electricity altogether, and "leapfrogged" straight to solar power.

Partly because of this shift, Coal India, which produced 554.13 million tonnes of coal in the 2016-2017 fiscal year (for comparison, the largest company in the US produced about 175 million in 2015) saw demand dip in recent months. This is not the first sign that coal is no longer the most economic option for emerging economies like India and China. Earlier this year, the heavily industrial state of Gujarat cancelled its proposed coal power plants. And a few weeks ago The Hindu reported that Coal India had identified another 65 mines in losses.

India's energy situation is changing so fast that even expert predictions about its switch to renewables are wildly off: A study from last year claimed India would be building more than 300 coal plants in the next 10 years, but experts said the data was already outdated by the time the report was published, and that India would be moving toward renewables instead.

Click to expand...

Please catch me up. When they say in "India" that solar is making economic inroads over coal are they assuming there are no government subsidies in India to prop up the economics of solar? Is spin present?
I need a lesson in the political economics of renewable energy worldwide.

texasedu said:

Please catch me up. When they say in "India" that solar is making economic inroads over coal are they assuming there are no government subsidies in India to prop up the economics of solar? Is spin present?
I need a lesson in the political economics of renewable energy worldwide.

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I think its all spin. It makes sense to close mines like the ones shown in the articles. Some of those mines if I recall were well over 100 years old. And 73 mines is only 8.6% of their mines.

RabidAlpaca said:

It's completely irrelevant whether there are subsidies for everything else (like oil) or not, coal is a dying technology and the companies that still do mine coal have a dozen people with heavy equipment chopping off tops of mountains, it's not thousands of workers with head lamps chopping away with pick axes. Even if we got 100% of our energy from coal, the number of jobs required would be miniscule. Technology changes and so does society.

Click to expand...

There are 40,000 coal miners today. If we are going to do away with coal 100%, they need to support and train all those people for new fields of work, not just add them to the welfare rolls.

holbritter said:

There are 40,000 coal miners today. If we are going to do away with coal 100%, they need to support and train all those people for new fields of work, not just add them to the welfare rolls.

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Sure, I'm all about retraining programs,, but the reality is that more and more careers are going extinct or simply requiring less people. The net number of jobs that can provide for a family is shrinking and it will continue to shrink with the development of technology. We need to rethink the way our economy is structured and not base one's livelihood on the ability to find a good job in a market with less and less good jobs.

RabidAlpaca said:

Sure, I'm all about retraining programs,, but the reality is that more and more careers are going extinct or simply requiring less people. The net number of jobs that can provide for a family is shrinking and it will continue to shrink with the development of technology. We need to rethink the way our economy is structured and not base one's livelihood on the ability to find a good job in a market with less and less good jobs.

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But how else would you base your livelihood?

holbritter said:

But how else would you base your livelihood?

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I'm not saying that we should get rid of all jobs and the concept of pay for jobs, but tying one's ability to eat to finding a job in a job-scarce economy is a recipe for disaster. As extreme as it may sound, I don't see any other option than some form of universal basic income. Wealth is becoming more and more concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people, further exacerbated by automation, and the wealth of the middle and lower classes continues and will continue to shrink.

Assuming just for argument's sake that this trend will continue, what do you propose? Should we go with the hardline capitalist solution and just let more and more of the population die off as jobs evaporate and worker efficiency improves? If within 5 years they master self-driving semi-trucks and suddenly 3 million American workers are out of a job, where do they go? To what do they retrain to when every other industry is feeling the same strains and layoffs? We need to restructure our economy in some way, because starving humans with no hope can reach boundless levels of desperation and violence.

RabidAlpaca said:

I'm not saying that we should get rid of all jobs and the concept of pay for jobs, but tying one's ability to eat to finding a job in a job-scarce economy is a recipe for disaster. As extreme as it may sound, I don't see any other option than some form of universal basic income. Wealth is becoming more and more concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people, further exacerbated by automation, and the wealth of the middle and lower classes continues and will continue to shrink.

Assuming just for argument's sake that this trend will continue, what do you propose? Should we go with the hardline capitalist solution and just let more and more of the population die off as jobs evaporate and worker efficiency improves? If within 5 years they master self-driving semi-trucks and suddenly 3 million American workers are out of a job, where do they go? To what do they retrain to when every other industry is feeling the same strains and layoffs? We need to restructure our economy in some way, because starving humans with no hope can reach boundless levels of desperation and violence.

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That is certainly a scary future to think about. I don't think we'll see that much advancement within 5 years, but to answer your question, I honestly don't know. I'm thinking that if more and more people lose jobs, and cannot find one, go on social services, it will naturally turn into a form of universal basic income.

holbritter said:

There are 40,000 coal miners today. If we are going to do away with coal 100%, they need to support and train all those people for new fields of work, not just add them to the welfare rolls.

Click to expand...

Our societies have been through similar bouts of disruptive technology and displacement before. It seems often to have looked bleak. One example of how frightening and existential this can be were the Luddites. Are their great great great grandchildren now worse off for not being weavers? Or the farm hands on my father in law's farm? He had over 20, when my wife was a child. Now there are two and a pile of machines. Thre is no more livestock and only one crop. The same at the count's place next door except he concentrated on white asparagus and strawberries. He now has two people for the agricultural operatiin and employs 40 migrants two and a half a year. Those he rented first from Poland. Now they mostly come from Romania or Bulgaria. The same has happend with the other farms, though, the smaller ones have clised altogether.

Most of the land workers that used to live on these farms have gone to the cities. A few have businesses in the villiage or one of the small towns etc. The school kids no longer work the fields seasonally, which would probably be illegal now in any event. The village is about 100 original family inhabitants and 150 families sustained by work on the Nato base or commutint to Düsseldorf.

Are the farm hands worse off? Is it necessarily bad that the child labour is replaces by machines and migrant Bulgarians soon to be replaced by Syrians or Sudanese maybe?

I have watched similar processes in developing agriculturas, studied clising factories and followed the industrial displacment of coal and steel on the Ruhr and in a smaller way in Bavaria. In each case the challenges were met differently and with differing success. One thing seems to be vital to prevent prolonged hardship. If the givernment installs indefinite relief programs it undermines confidence and prevents populations from following the jobs.

This does not mean that society should not research the situation. It must prepare possibly making structural changes that meet résistance. Stabilising the situation on the Ruhr prevented the displaced laborers from following the jobs being created in Southern Germany, where labor was imported instead first from poor areas in Europe, where poverty drove labour to leave lacking social programs binding the populatiin unproductively to home and then later laborers increasingly came from Turkey. Had the social programs been structured otherwise, the population on the Ruhr would have more likely migrated five hundered miles.

Now that was a skeletal discrimination and it isn't that easy. But it does indicate the normality of change and displacement and the pitfalls of well meant support.

Forget Paris: 1600 New Coal Power Plants Built Around The World

From the NYT 1,600 new coal-fired power plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries. When China halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants this year, even as President Trump vowed to “bring back coal” in America, the contrast seemed to confirm Beijing’s new role as a leader in the fight…
Continue reading →

From the NYT
[h=4]1,600 new coal-fired power plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries.[/h]

When China halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants this year, even as President Trump vowed to “bring back coal” in America, the contrast seemed to confirm Beijing’s new role as a leader in the fight against climate change.
But new data on the world’s biggest developers of coal-fired power plants paints a very different picture: China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.
These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries.
Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent. . . . .

[h=2]Coal Boom: 1600 new plants in 62 countries around the world – increasing 43%[/h]
“End-Coal” Global Coal Tracker does a magnificent job of showing how essential coal is around the world, and which countries are pathetically backwards in developing new coal plants. It’s probably not what the “CoalSwarm” team was hoping to achieve, but this map is a real asset to those of us who want to show how tiny Australia’s coal fired assets are compared to the rest of the world. The site itself is a fancy-pants high gloss major database and website that also shows how much money is in the “anti-coal” movement. Oh, that skeptics should have even 2% of these funds. Heffa Schücking, the director of Urgewald, which created the maps, calls it a “cycle of coal dependency”. Normal people call it “freedom and wealth”.
Chinese companies build coal plants — NY Times
These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries.
Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.
“Even today, new countries are being brought into the cycle of coal dependency,” said Heffa Schücking, the director of Urgewald. . . .

The strange thing is that the same people who are anti-coal, are usually anti-nuclear.
If Nuclear power had not been so demonized, we likely would not have many coal plants at this point.

longview said:

The strange thing is that the same people who are anti-coal, are usually anti-nuclear.
If Nuclear power had not been so demonized, we likely would not have many coal plants at this point.

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After all the years of world-wide nuclear power, there is still not one deep repository in the entire world, that is on-line, for storage of high-level wastes. Many of these man-made isotopes have to be stored for hundreds of thousands of years. The latest storage methods are rated for 200 years. I do not believe in saddling future generations with this responsiblity, both from a financial standpoint, and a safety standpoint.

Media_Truth said:

After all the years of world-wide nuclear power, there is still not one deep repository in the entire world, that is on-line, for storage of high-level wastes. Many of these man-made isotopes have to be stored for hundreds of thousands of years. The latest storage methods are rated for 200 years. I do not believe in saddling future generations with this responsiblity, both from a financial standpoint, and a safety standpoint.

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The current method of nuclear power, is not the only one possible.
Many can even use the waste from LWR reactors as fuel.
Nuclear is better that just about everything else in terms of emissions.

longview said:

The current method of nuclear power, is not the only one possible.
Many can even use the waste from LWR reactors as fuel.
Nuclear is better that just about everything else in terms of emissions.

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The experts say that you actually end up with more tonnage of nuclear waste than you start with...

Reprocessing and Nuclear Waste | Union of Concerned Scientists

This statement is contradicted by recent data from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which show that repro¬cessing greatly increases the total volume of radioactive waste, compared to direct disposal of spent fuel.[ii]

And since when do you, a climate-change denier, care about emissions?