By Vijay Jayaraj
This commentary was first published January 11, 2022 at Real Clear Energy
It has been a little more than a month since the United Nations climate meeting at Glasgow, yet global use of fossil fuels has increased rapidly.
For instance, U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled domestic oil projects and vowed to stop funding for international fossil fuel projects. But as fuel prices rose, Biden responded to his self-induced energy insecurity by releasing 50 million barrels of oil reserves and even called for an increase in domestic oil production.
Within a span of a few months, the U.S. president went from being a climate savior to climate villain. Though many may classify his actions as temporary solutions (to a non-existent problem), the rest of the world sees through the veneer of climate politics and the hypocrisy within.
There is nothing that the climate industrial complex can do about the situation in the U.S. or other parts of the world. In fact, in Asia, production of fossil fuels is proliferating.
India and China Goes Full Throttle on Coal
As climate doomsayers met in November in Glasgow for the annual U.N. meeting, Asian political leaders promoted policies that sought to increase fossil fuel production — largely because of lessons learned from acute coal shortages in India and China earlier in the year.
The Indian government has opened more coal mines and has allocated new mines to private players through auctions. India’s coal minister has asked the government’s coal production arm, Coal India Limited, to meet an annual target of 1 billion tonnes by 2024.
Meanwhile, China is taking similar measures to ensure its coal supply. Coal production for November hit record highs as Beijing scrambled to ensure enough of the fuel to meet winter needs. October 2021 witnessed the highest monthly production since March 2015. Overall, the first 11 months of this year accounted for 3.67 billion tonnes of coal, which is 4.2% higher than 2020.
Though India and China have managed to overcome the recent shortage in coal reserves, domestic production must be complemented by imports. Hence, the price of coal from Australia and Indonesia remains high. With the Omicron variant expected to have only a minimal impact on the economy, we can expect sustained demand for coal through 2022.
Oil Futures on a high and India cashes in on imports
India is also keen on securing its oil sources as OPEC has forecasted a high global demand in 2022. Oil from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq were bought in large quantities by Asian countries.
India’s Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas reported that the country would acquire “massive additional areas for oil exploration and production” by 2025. “As far as the government of India is concerned, we are going to step on the accelerator in terms of exploration and production in a very big way,” said the minister in November.
An UAE firm owned by India’s richest man is all set to import crude oil, petroleum, and petrochemical products in December. The country’s major state-owned oil firms and refineries have already secured supply for the first half of 2022.
Gas prices at fuel stations remained high in India throughout the year. However, the federal government intervened by releasing millions of barrels of oil from strategic reserves, prices have come down drastically. Meanwhile, the country’s aviation minister has made an open call to states to reduce jet fuel prices in order to “increase air-traffic.”
So, if anyone is thinking that fossil fuels are dead, they should think again. The 2.6 billion people in India and China will continue to use fossil fuels as their primary energy source until 2070. Even the most advanced European and Scandinavian countries are witnessing a revival of the fossil fuel sector.
It is as if the anti-fossil climate conference never happened this year. As if promises to end fossil fuels are nothing but vapors from the incense offered at the altar of climate drama — only to be consumed by an inescapable energy reality.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a Master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.
Meanwhile….
UK utility apologizes for advice to cuddle pets to stay warm – ABC News (go.com)
What and not eat?
Eat the pets and wrap yourself in their cuddly, warm pelts. Keeps costs down by not feeding them and you keep warm as well.
Win, win.
…. as long as you can afford the fuel to cook them. Raw cat tastes awful (I’m told)
If you need recipes, drop in to your local Chinese takeaway…
I was told by an old timer in Northern California that back in the days when there was a bounty on mountain lions, he stayed in the good graces of the game warden, who was fond of mountain lion livers, by providing him with the livers of the mountain lions he was collecting the bounty on.
If you see a hula-hoop on sale, grab it. Survival item.
It just keeps getting worse for the climate industrial complex-
Botched cavity wall insulation ruining homes by causing damp and mould (msn.com)
Didn’t they stop and think why we had wall cavities in external walls in the first place? And Ozzies thought the Pink Batts episode was bad enough! What a bunch of clueless morons these climate changers are.
They suffer from the same affliction that Mark Twain did when he was 17. He thought he knew everything and that his father was a hopeless dotard.
That’s the problem with arts degrees. And skipping maths in high school. They have zero understanding of the engineering behind all of our energy systems whether they be unreliables or fossil fuels. And they have even less understanding of nuclear. Until these fool’s are required to live by the rules they want to impose on everyone else for a minimum of 2 years, they will continue to carry on and make life miserable for the rest of us. The problem with reality is it hits you fair in the face at some point.
But those stone castles and mud huts are just so romantic for a sustainable eco-getaway in the right season.
I think they’re missing the sisalation layer that is part of Australian ADR for housing. No damp gets through to the inside then, at least if it’s installed properly.
Yes, a vapor barrier to prevent moisture from accumulating inside walls and a heat recovery ventilator to compensate for an air tight envelope. Dehumidifiers may be necessary. In colder climates it is interior humidity that is the problem.
Depends on the time of year and location, in Minnesota you dehumidify in the summer and humidify in the winter. Western North Dakota humidify almost year around. Arizona we don’t bother to humidify, it just plain dry.
The epitome of a green economy, you puts the insulation in and three years later you takes it out again, you puts up a bird chopper and twenty years later you dismantles it, digs up the concrete and starts a new one, or you covers the old shack with solar panels, three years later the batteries fail and fifteen years after that the panels stop working entirely, haul the batteries to the recycler who forwards them to the landfill, pile the panels in the back yard where they create vole habitat. The green economy provides endless employment for all.
Anything the Europeans do will more than offset by Asia. Which is the definition of virtue signaling.
” Anything the Europeans do … ”
… is more and more based on lack of reasonimg and irrationally applying magical “solutions”. No matter if the macro-economic indexes are good (and they aren’t), that irrationality is the manifestation of European cultural and social decadence.
You might want to proof read what you wrote – Europe has no chance of offsetting Asia – I don’t even think they can offset Canada!
To keep the activists satiated all that needs to be done is virtue signal and throw up a few windmills and solar panels. Besides, the carbon tax just means a new source of revenue to throw away on social issues that wouldn’t otherwise be available. It’s a win win for the activists and politicians.
The UK is currently running on 53% gas and 5% coal to keep the lights on – those damned windmills just won’t turn with no wind!
thank heavens for fossil fuels or the UK would currently be subject to power cuts
Those damned windmills are a net loss in the cold weather. There are heated to keep them warm, so they can run when the wind might blow.
Fossil fuel demand going up! I wonder if China will add, to the upcoming Winter Olympics “Shivering in the Dark” as a new medal sport? This would be virtue signaling at its best.
Ooooo… I like that. Shivering In The Dark.
The objective scoring is by seismograph, and there are style points awarded as well. Degree of difficulty is scored by the amount of shivering done while heat is steadily increased… kind of like a tractor pull.
BOUNUS! – It’s a non-gender specific event. A 4′ 9″ 87 lb. trans-something has just as much chance of seizing the Gold as a 6′ 9″ 265 lb. “it” of some gender or other. PC perfection!
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9.5, 9.4, 9.8. 8.9… oh, and there’s a 6.2 from the North Korean judge. He justified his low mark with, “You call that shivering in the dark?”
The Indian govt has been (unsuccessfully) trying for years to get more local coal production, rather than import it. Nothing new there!
and do look at all the countries ditching current and future coal plant in 2021…
We do, griff. And we’re right now watching them as they march in locked gooseteps towards the cliff edge of realisation that unreliables are inherently unreliable, while Putin has them all by the short and curlies as gas prices necessarily sky-rocket.
I’m sure that your CAGW Doomsday Death Cult is leaping for joy at the prospect of even more avoidable deaths from cold, as more and more people are pushed into energy poverty by your insanity fuelled by fevered dreams of catastrophes that you idiots are preventing, while you are actually creating them.
Clueless idiot. You are as delusional as ever and in more need of help than ever before. Loads of countries around the world have made commitments to end coal use and phase out coal plants. Few, if any, will actually follow through and reduce their hydrocarbon consumption. You need to learn the difference between actions and empty international virtue signalling.
And what will be your response to the British government’s toll of this season’s needless and avoidable Winter deaths of your nation’s citizens?
“Oh well, they were old and frail and no longer useful”?
Griff and his fellow acolytes will celebrate their deaths, which were a necessary sacrifice for the greater good of the planet, at their CAGW Doomsday Death Cult altars (solar panels and bird choppers).
He’ll probably blame it on climate change and scream for even more of what caused it.
You hit it right – green politicians don’t give a rat’s butt even for their voters – but seem fixated on pleasing greenies and warmunists.
Griffter, you’re lying, AGAIN. India’s coal production rose by about 4% every year from 2011 to 2018. peaked in 2018, dropped in 2019 by about 1%, and in (Covid year) 2020 stayed at almost the peak year’s production, only off by 0.5%. India had about the same production last year (also a Covid year) but India’s coal production is projected to set a new record high in 2022.
Griffter, you lie so often that if you ever stumbled upon the truth nobody is going to believe you.
Looking bad for coal?
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/coal
You mean state-run coal.
“and do look at all the countries ditching current and future coal plant in 2021…”
You can look at them all you like, but the reality is this:
Global power generation from coal is expected to jump by 9% in 2021 to an all-time high of 10,350 terawatt-hours, according to the IEA’s Coal 2021 report.
Overall coal demand worldwide – including uses beyond power generation, such as cement and steel production – is forecast to grow by 6% in 2021.
Coal power generation is set to increase by almost 20% this year in the United States and the European Union.
In other news, Unicorn farts still causing widespread dysfunction in unreliable energy.
My unicorns are working fine.
Note the offtake in the thigh for the fartharvesting hose.
Is that a unicorn rainbow in the sky?
Certainly.
” … and do look at all the countries ditching current and future coal plant in 2021 … )
Did you, griff? Or are you only speaking out of what you imagine they are and did?
I think Griff is indulging in wishful thinking.
No thinking involved.
I keep pointing out and you keep ignoring it.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants
Must be at least 10 times now. India is building plenty of coal plants.
Yeah, Griff’s rather obstinate but no matter, reality will intercede on his magical, unicorn-filled universe. Too bad that the poor will suffer more in the interim.
reality will intercede on his magical, unicorn-filled universe
I doubt it. If his “sources” told him it was sunny, he would swear that it was even while being drenched in a monsoon.
Outside of Europe, N. America and Australia, nobody is ditching coal.
Just this past summer, griff was proclaiming that short falls in wind power didn’t matter because the coal plants were able to pick up the slack.
One constant with griff, he really doesn’t care how often he directly contradicts himself.
With the UK grid currently using 53% gas and 5% coal to keep the lights on, I’m sure they won’t be ditched for a decade or three, if ever!
Not seeing any outside a few EU ones.
Reading comprehension is a prerequisite for this site.
“As far as the government of India is concerned, we are going to step on the accelerator in terms of exploration and production in a very big way,” said the minister in November.
Go to love that: “step on the accelerator”!
Coal makes sense for India and China (and Africa) electricity for two reasons: they have it, and can inexpensively import any shortfall from Australia.
Coal does not make sense for US generation even tho we have lots. I ran the numbers for essay Clean Coal over at Judith’s some years ago. At any natural gas price less than about $8/mbtu, CCGT is more economic (LCOE) than USC coal (only one US comparison plant, Turk in Arkansas burning low ash Powder River subbituminous). Thanks to shale fracking, US has LOTS of fairly inexpensive natural gas for the foreseeable future despite becoming the biggest LNG exporter this year. Haven’t even begun to tap the Utica underlying the Marcellus.
China rejected buying Australian coal for ludicrous geopolitical reasons, but may be buying as much as they can (at even higher price) via third party intermediaries, and other countries importing it for them. And they still have a massive coal shortfall this winter and major economic disruption from it, and most heavy industry closed down until spring. They have admitted this is the case, and the country is subject to routine rolling blackouts until well into Spring.
Australia would LOVE to sell India any amount of coal it needs. The problem is not supplemental production availability, especially for a country like India, it’s the price of the coal. Wealthier countries in Asia can afford it, but India does not have sufficient GDP to provide assured supply and continuous import of coal.
Here’s the price and linked price graphs available today, in Australia
Note that the bottom two were ~$174 a bit over a week ago. Coal was already unaffordably priced at that level for routine Indian mass-importation. It needs to be much lower for them to buy it. They are in a terrible situation right now, it’s a buffer supply option, but too expensive to access. Australia will probably end up selling them more uranium and especially gas. But for now, India requires the price of coal to go below $100 AUD, so they can prevent rolling blackouts, which just do economic damage.
As a result, India and China are both in a coal supply dilemma. China’s Xi Jinping blew the Chinese people’s economic foot off by foolishly trying to inflict economic pain on Australia (for essentially next to nothing). A fairly incredible mistake, but that is how incompetent and ignorant the Beijing CCP and its upper leadership are. Absolute idiots, stuck behind a self-created CCP firewall of ignorance about their real vulnerabilities, and pathetic lack of actual market and economic power.
Plus, the cost of coal deliveries also impedes India affording to build up their stockpile of coal. So a price rose in the last QTR of 2021 Indian companies instead used up the coal stockpile they had, until they had none left. So now they have no supply price buffer, so are directly exposed to the very high demand and prices for Australian coal coming from big economies in Asia (not China).
To remedy this life-threatening and economically and geopolitically destabilising lack of base load electricity supply in Asia, the whole world needs to increase coal production, quickly, and flood the market with abundant coal, then the prices will drop.
Exactly the opposite of what is being recommended by all the brainless govs in Europe and in Washington, and especially the UN.
And Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne govs are all inclined to go along with those fool’s anti-affordable energy agendas.
But we will pay BIG, if these countries become unstable, their economies fall apart, and civil militancy and conflict spreads.
European govs and the clowns in Brussels won’t give a stuff about the consequences of their stupid unaffordable energy policies. They’ll be too busy dealing with the blow-back of their own self-inflicted energy affordability-of-supply ’emergency’, and the civil population’s reaction to them at that point.
That will be the Climate-Crisis™ … not the one they expected … the one they self engineered.
“To remedy this life-threatening and economically and geopolitically destabilising lack of base load electricity supply in Asia, the whole world needs to increase coal production, quickly, and flood the market with abundant coal, then the prices will drop.”
Are you listening, Joe Manchin? The world needs West Virginia’s coal, Joe. Do something about it.
My family only burned anthracite for heat as I was growing up. We had a coal bin in the basement and God-help you if you didn’t bank the coal in the firebox before going to bed for the night…cols starts in the morning, ugh! Anyway, hard coal is the best for heat; bituminous not so much. Isn’t high-sulpher bituminous what China has in great supply? Not sure about India, but I suspect the same.
How long does it take for a cold coal stove to start putting out useful heat?
After shaking down the ash in the firebox and adjusting the flues (doors open), we started a fire in the firebox with newspapers, added sticks of dried oak in varied sizes (first smaller, the larger). When the oak was becoming a mass of glowing embers coal was added, a little at a time in a level fashion . As the first coals became hot, showing color, we would add more, then carefully bank the coals. The time from cold to hot varied on which sibling did the restart, but I believe it took me about 45 minutes. During this time period, I could not leave the fireboax until there was a bed of glowing coals nested against each other. Plenty of heat after that. As for teamwork, my Mom took care of the coal fires during the day and we took over when we got home from school.
Wrong. You have drunk the anti-coal koolade. Given a level playing field, coal most certainly can compete with NG. NG has its advantages, and its disadvantages. It is not available everywhere, for one. It is subject to price spikes due to increased demand.
You also can’t store NG on site in case there are supply interruptions.
Facts are downvoted if they don’t support your preferred solution?
Fixed it
When I was a kid we cut up tree branches with an axe and saw and made a fire place with a hole and some rocks around it.
Too complicated?
It’s the lugging the wood up to the 12th floor of the tenement block that’s complicated.
Yes, that could be a problem. I was living in the bush at the time.
The first lesson of economics is scarcity. The natural order of things is to use what is closest, most abundant, and therefore cheapest.
The unnatural order is AGW/war on first world industry defining energy production and use.
The Paris Accord . . . stick a fork in it, it’s done.
Done? Hardly! Greek mythology tells us that for every head chopped off, the Hydra will regrow two more heads.
The Greeks were way too conservative when they created the regeneration powers of their mythical monster. Today’s real monster is way more resourceful. A Google search on “Universities offering a master’s degree in climate change” produces a depressing list of universities offering “Climate Change” programs.
It’s the Climate Change PhDs that we have to worry about b/c everyone knows that PhDs are experts and hence can’t be wrong
“As if promises to end fossil fuels are nothing but vapors from the incense offered at the altar of climate drama — only to be consumed by an inescapable energy reality.” COP26 gave Naomi Oreskes the vapors.
This is a story about hard reality. It is very likely to be unpalatable to anyone in the imaginary climate Armageddon camp but, experience suggests nothing based on observational fact will every be acceptable to the tender stomachs of the climate panic adherents. I’l have a look around the house and see if I can find any sympathy for those unfortunate disciples of doom but no promises.
That’s the reason the West has to lower it’s fossil fuel usage, so that China and India and other similar countries can continue to ramp up their usage without the overall fossil fuel usage going higher.
Humans have to use energy sources to survive and prosper. Wind mills and solar panels don’t provide that. Period. Full stop.
The UK grid is currently running on 53% gas and 5% coal to keep the lights on – without fossil fuels, we would be in power outages
The epitome of a green economy, you puts the insulation in and three years later you takes it out again, you puts up a bird chopper and twenty years later you dismantles it, digs up the concrete and starts a new one, or you covers the old shack with solar panels, three years later the batteries fail and fifteen years after that the panels stop working entirely, haul the batteries to the recycler who hauls them to the dump, pile the panels in the back yard where they create vole habitat. The green economy provides endless employment for all.
Our neighbour installed about 40 solar panels last fall. Since mid December they have been free of snow for about 4 days. Early on he tried to keep them clear of snow resulting in negative energy output for the darkest, coldest part of the year.
Unfortunately the UK population have yet to understand that the high energy prices coming down the line ( potential + £2k annual increase per household) are caused by the politicians reliance on unreliables. Still, “saving the planet” can justify killing your citizens, until said citizens cotton on that they have been scammed……
It’s not about climate, nor was it ever (except in the minds of the useful idiots).
Welcome to the great Lie – oops I mean reset. As I read recently, taken straight out of Hitler’s playbook, a lie this big and often repeated is so hard for ordinary people to comprehend that they won’t believe it’s a lie until it’s too late.