Why Coal’s biggest problem right now, is not renewables
There’s no doubt that coal has a legitimacy problem with large swathes of the public around the world. Once a darling of energy and still in relative abundant supplies, Coal provides significant levels of energy per gram consumed. Yet the end outcome is now known to be incredibly harmful to localised communities needing to breathe air filled with particulates, as well as the climate heating properties of its use. With renewable energy sources being positioned for rapid uptake, it’d be easy to think that Coal’s major problem is renewable energy alternatives. But if you’re in the coal Industry and thinking you need to hold the tide against renewables, you’re fighting the wrong tide
So let me go out on a limb here. The Coal sector’s biggest problem is not holding the tide against renewables – that link has already been established despite numerous Government’s policy changes and uncertainty. Instead, what is galvanising the ‘anti-coal’ proponents is an energy source much closer to the coal sector – fracking.
Coal seam gas extraction is quite frankly a pariah in energy. Around the world, the threats to land use, poisoning of water supplies, depletion of fresh water for townships and more, has heightened awareness of the need for alternatives to such a point, that movements once considered miles apart, have discovered a significant alliance and likeness. The ‘green’ and ‘farm’ goroups have been forged together to hold off fracking, to retain arable land, to allow farmers to manage their own land without the destructive and toxic chemicals utilised by the fracking industry potentially poisoning their farms forever.
This anti-fracking movement has provided the energy to significantly question the viability of developing new coal resources. Fracking is the weird relative at the family BBQ. No one really wants it but it turns up uninvited and with long term impacts unknown (but not likely to be beneficial).
That Coal seam gas exploration has not provided ANY benefits to consumers in New South Wales is well know with a state-wide price rise INCREASE of almost 20% being attributable directly to export of gas overseas. These price jumps have encouraged (even forced) consumers to seek out alternatives, and yet again, renewables, particularly solar, continue to benefit. And consumers now have a price point that even without feed in tariff payments, the cost of a solar system is at a level where many still proceed regardless. The CSG sector is actively working against any chance that coal might have led the drive to a managed draw down of it’s assets.
If existing coal players want to be able to find ways to maintain a business by having the lead time to develop cleaner options for coal, they need to focus on putting the racking sector back in pandora’s box. Until they do (and the longer they take to do so) the viability risks grow and community acceptance levels decline. Renewable energy is not Coal’s biggest problem – it’s CSG fracking.
You’d think that given a focus on the future, you’d ask specialists in the future to have some input, and whilst that didn’t occur for the PM’s Summit in Canberra over the weekend, some of Australia’s Futurists had already done the leg work to contribute their thoughts on the future of Australia. That report is…
Read More >Some of Australia’s leading futurists gathered in Melbourne in March to provide a specialist Futures approach to addressing the Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra. The outcome of that Summit and the development that subsequently followed has led to the creation of the report ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’ that has worked through each of the ten…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will meet with eminent ABC radio presenter Jon Faine on Wednesday the 16th of April to discuss the outcomes of the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra on the weekend With a focus on the future of Australia it would be only natural…
Read More >A group of leading Australian Futurists gathered over the weekend to consider the 10 core themes set to be tackled at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra in April. Convened by Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber, the 2020 Australia Futurists Summit utilised some of the advanced facilitation and strategy development techniques as a…
Read More >As preparations continue for the Prime Minister Rudd’s ‘1000 heads’ ideas summit in Canberra in April, a group of Australia’s leading futurists are gathering in Melbourne this weekend for the ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’. The futurists attending the summit work across Australia, in corporate, not for profit and Government agencies in a variety of fields…
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Read More >Marcus Barber offers his thoughts on How to Stop Japanese Whaling in its Tracks and suggests that raiding boats won’t do the job. Instead he suggests that the key to negotiating with the Japanese is to have the Japanese people do the work. And to encourage them to do so we must begin to talk…
Read More >If an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ raised the profile of global warming to the general population, it appears that a willingness by political leaders to take appropriate action to mitigate the possible ramifications is still very much lacking. It is such a pity. No one who holds the Global Warming scenario close to heart wants to be…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will join Tim Cox on 774 ABC as part of the conversation hour next week Tim is filling in for Jon Faine whilst he takes a well deserved break and Marcus will join him for the conversation hour kicking off at 11am on Thursday the 13th of December, where they’ll discuss…
Read More >At the AustForesight 2007 Conference, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber and fellow Futurist Steve Tighe presented their take on what is required to enable futurists to be seen as more relevant to the Corporate world. Drawing on their shared experience as facilitator and client, they detailed the journey of foresight and futures across the past 50…
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