King Coal: Reports of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated (apologies to Mark Twain)
7 hours ago Guest Blogger 16 Comments
Reposted from Forbes
Tilak Doshi | Contributor
I analyze energy economics and related public policy issues.
President Biden said recently that “we’re going to be shutting [coal] plants down all across America and having wind and solar.” West Virginia’s Democrat Senator Joe Manchin, representing a state that gets 90% of its electricity from coal, scathingly called Biden’s comments “outrageous … offensive and disgusting” which “ignore the severe economic pain the American people are feeling because of rising energy costs”. Senator Manchin had extended legislative support for President Biden’s so-called “Inflation Reduction Act”, laden with pork for wind and solar, in return for a “nebulous ‘deal’ with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to pursue the passage of language designed to streamline federal energy permitting processes”.
But the bottom line remains in Senator Manchin’s favor, even if he was played by the Democrat establishment: King Coal is making a comeback all around the world. West Virginia’s coal miners may well lose their livelihoods to the renewable energy diktats of the progressive Green Democrats in charge at Washington D.C. but King Coal runs supreme where it matters. After decades of energy policies in the West which sought to eliminate coal use in the global economy, it seems that King Coal is living through a 2nd Renaissance.
Asia Leads: Making A Comeback
Obituaries for coal have been announced ad nauseam, most recently at last year’s UN climate change COP26 summit in Edinburgh. Yet we saw the eight-fold price surge in coal since September 2020 to over $430 per ton two years later from prices that ranged between $50 – $150 a ton through the past decade. This was led by a resurgence of demand after the pandemic lockdowns – especially in China and India, the world’s two largest coal consumers accounting for two-thirds of the world total — but also in Japan, South Korea, Europe and the US.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/12/03/king-coal-reports-of-my-death-have-been-greatly-exaggerated-apologies-to-mark-twain/
