IEA: Coal Demand Grows While worldwide investment in “clean” energy – solar, wind, hydro, and by some definitions, nuclear – is growing faster than dollars spent on fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency’s “World Energy Investment 2023”, coal is far from down and out. The IEA report noted, “Global coal demand reached an all-time high in 2022, and coal investment this year is on course to reach nearly six times the levels envisaged in 2030 in the Net Zero Scenario.”
According to the report, 2022 saw about 40 GW of new coal plants approved, the highest since 2016. Almost all of that was in China. Overall investment in fossil energy topped $1 trillion. The Associated Press reported, “Part of the problem is that demand for energy is outstripping increases in supplies in many parts of the world. Powerful energy industry interests also sway decisions about investments in future capacity, often in favor of fossil fuels.”
SA: Living and Dying with Coal Perhaps the most bizarre coal story recently comes from coal-rich South Africa, where the state-owned utility Eskom is unable to keep its major fleet of coal-fired power plants in full service, to the point that the Economist is suggesting it could become a “failed state.” Eskom is looking to extend the life of its two largest operating coal plants to keep the lights on for at least some of the time, according to Bloomberg, which commented that “extending the lives of the polluting coal-fired giants would be a financial challenge for embattled state power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. and raise questions about South Africa’s commitment to curbing greenhouse gas emissions.”
Ironically, South Africa is one of the few countries that is actually exceeding its greenhouse goals, precisely because of extended outages at its coal plants. Also contributing to South Africa’s electric woes: the two-unit, 2,000-MW Koeberg nuclear station. According to the BusinessTech newspaper, an unplanned trip of Koeberg 2 on April 15, with unit 1 out of service long-term during a life extension project, plunged the country into a “Stage 6” load shedding, which means that some 37% of the country was without electricity for 36 hours over four days.
Justice Sues Justices The U.S. Justice Department is suing the West Virginia coal empire controlled by the family of Republican Gov. Jim Justice for some $7 million in unpaid fines for 130 violations of Interior Department regulations levied by the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation Enforcement, including uncontested corporate civil penalties, uncontested individual civil penalties, and uncontested Abandoned Mine Land reclamation fees. The suit also alleges that the Justice operations failed to obey warnings to cease operations until the fine were paid.
The nominal head of the 13-company mining conglomerate is James Justice III (Jay) Justice, son of the governor, although the general understanding in the Mountaineer State is that the elder Justice still rules the venture. The filing has political implications, as Gov. Justice is running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Joe Manchin, a former W.Va. governor and current chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Manchin has not yet announced if he will run for reelection in a vividly red state. He has been toying with running for President.
Jim Justice, a Republican for most of his life, ran for governor in 2016 as the Democratic nominee and easily defeated a Republican for the office. In office, he renounced his Democratic affiliation and reclaimed a Republican identity. Justice and fellow Republicans quickly suggested, without support, that the federal government suit is politically motivated. Justice said, “The Biden administration is aware of the fact that with a win for the U.S. Senate, and everything, we could very well flip the Senate… government agencies can sometimes surely react, and this could be something in regard to that.”
Crypto Coal Cryptocurrency “miners,” who use enormous amounts of electricity to run the computers that are key to the blockchain ledgers behind the ethereal “monies,” are using mountains of coal wastes in Pennsylvania to generate power, according to WESA, Pittsburgh’s NPR station. The station reported, “In Pennsylvania, some crypto-mining companies are taking advantage of incentives for burning waste coal and remediating former mineland.”
Pennsylvania, the granddaddy of coal mining in North America, is dotted with abandoned piles of mine wastes – mixtures of coal and rock not economical to burn in industrial settings, such as making electricity or steel. There is even a nomenclature for the mine tailings. Anthracite (hard coal) waste mountains in eastern Pennsylvania are “culm dumps,” while the bituminous (soft coal) tailings sites in the Keystone State’s west are “gob piles.”
Viewing the coal waste mountains as an environmental problem, the state’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard requires electric utilities to buy 10% of their power from a group of sources that includes waste coal. Enter the crypto-miners, happy to comply. Greg Beard, CEO of Stronghold Digital Mining, owner of the 95-MW Scrubgrass Power Plant which burns coal waste in Venango County in the western part of the state, said, “We’ve been made out to be, like, renegade power producers that are running terribly inefficient power plants and are polluting even more than regular thermal coal plants. Our plants were designed for remediation as a priority, not power production.”
Environmental law firm Earth Justice disagrees. “The commonwealth must not encourage a practice that increases carbon dioxide emissions and climate impacts even as we work hard to reduce them elsewhere,” Earth Justice attorney Charlie McPhedran said. New York has imposed a 2-year moratorium on crypto-mining while it looks at the issue.
–Kennedy Maize
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