Anyone who knows how coal power works knows this is misleading nonsense.
Coal plants are developed with a particular rank of coal in mind.
It requires a massive overhaul to change the fuel stock, especially to switch to Australian coals which are higher in sulphur.
Coal plants are developed with a particular rank of coal in mind.
It requires a massive overhaul to change the fuel stock, especially to switch to Australian coals which are higher in sulphur.
Switching from low-calorific value local coals to high-CV imports from Australia means putting in a massive flue gas desulphurization plant.
The costs of running that can undermine the economics of the generator itself, and that's assuming you can physically fit it on the site.
The costs of running that can undermine the economics of the generator itself, and that's assuming you can physically fit it on the site.
What he's actually talking about is hoping for a mass program of capex on thermal plants to lock in long-term assets designed to take Australian coal, at higher costs than both renewables and existing lower-rank coal plants.
This doesn't happen without massive state support.
This doesn't happen without massive state support.
As risk of going on too long, in answer to this: It's a lot more complicated than higher-quality/lower quality.
You have different coal plant technologies. Subcritical, supercritical, ultrasupercritical. The latter two are "newer", with somewhat lower emissions, and more prevalent in places like Japan/Korea/Taiwan that buy Australian a lot of high-energy Australian coal.
Then you have issues of coal quality, which you can measure on several different criteria.
Energy: Australia (and Russia) comes out on top.
Sulphur: Our coal does badly, high-energy coals are normally high-sulphur too.
Moisture/ash etc.: Ours is usually a bit better.
Energy: Australia (and Russia) comes out on top.
Sulphur: Our coal does badly, high-energy coals are normally high-sulphur too.
Moisture/ash etc.: Ours is usually a bit better.
As it happens a lot of high-rank Australian thermal coal is used in supercritical and ultrasupercritical generators in northeast Asia, but that technology can also burn lower-rank coal.
It's arguably better suited to low-rank coal, in fact, because the capital equipment and maintenance costs are higher in supercritical and ultrasupercritical plants so you want to be spending less on fuel.
There's also the sulphur issue which is a big expense.
There's also the sulphur issue which is a big expense.
So ideally China wouldn't be building new generators at all, but even if it does there's no reason that it would have to build them to burn high-energy Australian coals.
In fact all we know about Chinese energy policy is they want to use domestic reserves, not imports.
In fact all we know about Chinese energy policy is they want to use domestic reserves, not imports.
And while there's decent if unspectacular emissions benefits from using supercritical/ultra-SC vs. subcritical coal plants, there's far less significant benefits from using high-energy vs. low-energy coals in them.
That's because the emissions and the energy released are both proportionate to the number of CH molecules split apart per unit of energy generated, and that doesn't really change much with the coal's energy content.
Using high-energy coals does reduce the energy consumed in transporting and moving coal round the plant, to be sure, but using high-sulphur coals also consumes energy in removing it etc.
In many ways ash content is a much better guide to carbon efficiency, and there we significantly underperform Indonesian product: ieefa.org/fact-checking-…
I should say in reference to above: Australian coal is usually better in terms of ash content than stuff like Indian and Chinese coal. But worse than Indonesian.
