Month: May 2017

Clean coal

John Quiggin37 Comments

The Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has announced legislation to allow the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to fund coal-fired power stations using Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), often called “clean coal”. Although there has been plenty of criticism, this is actually a Good Thing.

If it worked at low cost, CCS would solve a lot of problems, particularly for Australia. We could burn coal, and store the resulting carbon dioxide underground, fixing much of the climate change problem without changing anything else. The ease of this (hypothetical) solution is why CCS plays a big role in lots of climate change scenarios.

Unfortunately, cost-effective CCS doesn’t exist, and isn’t likely to. So, barring some great new discovery, the change in CEFC rules is purely symbolic.

What makes the announcement a Good Thing is that avoids the “bait and switch” used by Frydenberg and others in the past, where clean coal is described in terms of CCS, then shifted to included “High Efficiency, Low Emissions” (HELE) coal plants. This term refers to the fact that plants constructed today are indeed more efficient, and therefore have lower emissions per unit of electricity, than those built thirty years ago. But they are still far worse than gas-fired plants let alone renewables or (if it could be made to work) CCS.

Weekly email #3

John Quiggin6 Comments

Here’s the third of my planned weekly emails. If you want to be on the recipient list email me at j.quiggin@uq.edu.au (preferred) or put in a request in the comments section. If you expected to get an email and didn’t, please contact me.

Read More »

Queensland government backing away from Adani?

John Quiggin21 Comments

Looking at news coverage and the emails I’m getting from climate action groups, it looks as if I may have misinterpreted the Queensland government’s move on royalties (or maybe I posted before the decision process was complete). The latest news is that the state government will take no part in processing any loan to Adani from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund. I’ll try to post again when I get a clearer picture on this.

What remains clear is that Adani is having a lot of trouble finding bank loans or equity investors to invest in the Carmichael mine project. Given the poor economics of the project, any money lent by Australian governments is likely to be lost, leaving the publci with a stranded and useless asset.

Update 31/5/17 The Guardian reports that https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/30/adani-reaches-mine-royalty-agreement-with-queensland-government to defer nearly all of its royalty obligations for the first five years of production under the new deal, with interest charged on anything owed to the state above that. Almost certainly the interest rate would be well below what a commercial lender would charge, given the risk of default.

More noteworthy, I think, is the following

That would be the trigger for what the company has flagged would be $100m to $400m of preliminary works. But the deadline for financial close, the securing of bank backing to build the mine and rail to haul coal to the coast, is early 2018

As has been true for the past several years, the date when the project actually starts still seems to be at least a year away.

We’ll see at least some money on the table if the “preliminary works” start on the supposed schedule. But my guess is that the scale of the work will be less than meets the eye. I wonder, for example, whether the expenditure figure includes work done before Adani mothballed the project back in 2015.

Less is more

John Quiggin12 Comments

Reading the news, I find a lot of items demonstrating a scale of values that makes no sense to me. Some are important in the grand scheme of things, some are less so, but perhaps more relevant to me. I think about writing posts but don’t find the time. So here are a few examples, which you are welcome to chew over.

* Blowing things and people up is seen as a demonstration of clarity and resolve (unless someone is doing it to us, in which case it’s correctly recognised as cowardly and evil). The most striking recent example (on “our” side) was the instant and near-universal approval of Trump’s bombing of an airfield in Syria, which had no effect at all on events there. In this case, there was some pushback, which is a sign of hope, I guess.

* The significance of art and artists is determined by the whims of billionaires. Referring to the sale of a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat for over $100 million the New York Times says

most agree that the Basquiat sale has cemented his place in the revenue pantheon with Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon; confirming that he is not some passing trend; and forcing major museums to acknowledge that, by not having the artist in their collections, they passed over a crucial figure in art history.

[1]

* As far as economic research is concerned, less is more. More precisely, an academic economist with a small number of publications in top-rated journals is better regarded by other economists than one with an equal (or even somewhat larger) number of ‘good journal’ publications along with more research published in less prestigious outlets. I can vouch for that, though it’s less of a problem in Australia than in less peripheral locations. I have the impression that the same is true in other fields, but would be interested in comments.

[fn1] To be fair, this is preceded by a brief acknowledgement that “auction prices don’t necessarily translate into intrinsic value”, but there’s no suggestion that any other measure of intrinsic value is worth considering.

More Adani asterisks

John Quiggin9 Comments

The Palaszczuk government has, unsurprisingly, capitulated to the Adani corporation’s demands for a tax holiday. To avoid accusations of bias, they have offered the same deal to other new coal projects. If these projects go ahead, the implications for the planet are disastrous. But, at least in Adani’s case, there are plenty of reasons to doubt that this will happen.

It’s now clear that any “investment decision” by Adani will involve spending modest sums on land clearing and surveying. That’s enough to keep the option open and avoid writing off the money already spent on the project. But the real decision, which requires bank finance, appears to have been deferred from June 2017 to some time in 2018. The first shipments of coal aren’t expected until 2020.

My guess is that, before anything of substance happens in the Galilee Basin, Adani will be back with more demands (maybe a Danzig corridor). Sooner or later, they’ll make an offer that can be refused, at which point they’ll pull up stumps and send in the lawyers asking for compensation.

(Sorry for the absence of links, I’ve been reading different bits and pieces).

Drug Wars: Crosspost from Crooked Timber

John Quiggin10 Comments

I got a preview of Drug Wars by
Robin Feldman and Evan Frondorf. It’s not about the War on Drugs, but about the devices used by Big Pharma to maintain the profits they earn from their intellectual property (ownership of drug patents, brand names and so on) and to stave off competition from generics. Feldman and Frondorf propose a number of reforms to the operation of the patenting system to enhance the role of generics. I’m more interested in a fundamental shift away from using intellectual property (patents and brand names) to finance pharmaceutical research.
Read More »

Simple, but not easy

John Quiggin10 Comments

I’ll be debating John Rivett at lunchtime today on the subject of Easytax. Rivett is a lawyer who works with John McRobert, the main proponent of the tax (three Johns have got a bit confusing at times). Details are here

I’d have preferred a free event, but I left it to the proponents to organise, so I can’t complain I guess. I’ve attached my presentation, which gives a fair idea of what I’m going to say, and I believe a video of the event will be made available.

Meanwhile, in the real world

John Quiggin26 Comments

Advocates of an expansion of Australian coal mining are constantly claiming that India is desperate for imported coal to supply urgently needed electricity. Leaving aside the Indian government’s stated determination to end coal imports in the next few years (at least for the large public sector), what’s happening to actual demand for coal-fired electricity. Undoubtedly, it was growing very rapidly until quite recently. The Indian government had grandiose plans for a fleet of “Ultra Mega” power plants UMPP, a couple of which actually got built. And state governments were tendering out large contracts to supply electricity, designed with coal-fired power stations in mind.

In the last few weeks, there have been two big developments. Following a string of other cancellations, the government of Gujarat has cancelled a proposed UMPP Key quote

The new decision is believed to be also in line with the Centre’s push to bring down coal import. However, the state government is willing to provide land for a UMPP if the central government wishes to initiate one, says Sapariya. Adding: “Our focus is now on renewable energy. The government will encourage solar power.”

Meanwhile, the government of Uttar Pradesh has cancelled bids conducted in 2016 to procure 3,800 MW of power from independent power producers. Adani was among the suppliers shortlisted to share in the supply contract. This isn’t an isolated event

The UP government’s move, analysts said, is symptomatic of the deeper malaise: On the one hand, hardly any power purchase agreements (PPAs) are being signed and now, the bids for new contracts are being cancelled; on the other, plans to set up large thermal power plants are either being put in abeyance or abandoned. The Gujarat government, for instance, recently dropped the plan to set up a 4,000 MW imported coal-based ultra mega power project at Gir Somnath district, apparently because it thinks that upcoming renewable energy units could meet the the power requirement.

About 33,000 MW of thermal power plants, with an approximate investment of about Rs 2 lakh crore, are left stranded across the country due to the lack of PPAs.

That’s nearly 8 GW gone in the space of a few weeks. By my calculation (a check would be much appreciated) a 1 GW thermal coal station operating at 70 per cent capacity uses about 3 million tonnes of coal a year. Multiply that by 8 and you get 24 million tonnes, the entire projected output of Adani’s first stage project.