'Delusional': NSW report banks on rising coal output and royalties out to 2056


The Baird government's future projection for NSW implies the state will extract more than 10 billion tonnes of coal at the rate of almost 1 million tonnes a day by 2056, forecasts the Greens say are "delusional" in a carbon-constrained world.

The NSW Intergenerational report released this month estimated Australia's richest state would swell in population by 50 per cent to 11.2 million in 40 years, with an annual output of $1.3 trillion by then.

The report also based its financial estimates in part on mineral volumes continuing to grow by 1.2 per cent a year. Thermal coal used in power stations currently accounts for 87 per cent of those volumes.

The 104-page document excludes any examination of climate change.

The Greens crunched the numbers on coal, and assumed thermal and coking coal would maintain their respective shares of total mining. At a 1.2 per cent annual growth, the 196.6 million tonnes of coal extracted in the 2013-14 year would swell to 324.5 million tonnes a year by 2056 - or closing in on a million tonnes a day.

Between 2016 and 2056, the state would have extracted 10.58 billion tonnes of coal - both thermal and coking - over these years based on the report's figures, the Greens said.

Jeremy Buckingham, the Greens energy spokesman, said the projections ignore climate change and the pledges made by the world's nations in Paris to shift to net-zero carbon emissions by the second half of this century.

"According to the NSW Treasury, the mining boom will never end, coal is forever and climate change doesn't matter," Mr Buckingham said. "Instead of delusional projections, we need a serious strategy to deal with the decline of coal and provide a managed transition to renewable energy."

The projections for state royalties are perhaps even more ambitious given the deep dive in coal prices since peaking in 2011.

"With the thermal coal price assumed to grow with the consumer price inflation minus any change in the terms of trade, royalty revenue is expected to increase at an annual average of 4.2 per cent over the projection period," the report states.

Royalties from coal in 2015 were worth $1.27 billion, which on the projected rate of increase would balloon to $6.88 billion a year by 2056, the Greens said. (See chart below.)



more :

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/delusional-nsw-report-banks-on-...