China and Japan see the future, and it’s not coal: why Australia will be stranded
August 17, 2019
The Age
Scott Morrison was a lone voice at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu this week as his government warned that any condemnation of coal, or calls for a ban on new mines, were a ‘‘red-line issue’’. It may be that Beijing sees things differently.
The fact is, Australia might only have a decade left to wean itself off coal if the latest international efforts to decarbonise are anything to go by.
The demand for coal from some of Australia’s main thermal coal export markets, specifically China and Japan, is in decline. Both major economies are rapidly transitioning to clean technology.
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) reports that China is taking the lead in the clean energy race to become the world’s largest producer, exporter and installer of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles.
Despite forecasts that China will continue to consume about half the world’s coal until 2023, the country has spent more on renewable energy than any other country and led a campaign to burn gas instead of coal in its battle against pollution. It has already promised to launch a series of solar and wind projects that can provide electricity at the same price as coal-fired power.
China’s investment from January to March this year in thermal power plants, which mostly consist of coal-fired generators, slumped 30 per cent from a year earlier. In contrast, spending on hydro-power and wind-power projects rose 48 per cent and 30 per cent respectively. Most of the capital expenditure planned by coal-fired power companies will be in renewable energy.
A push to a cleaner economy is also visible in Japan.
With a traditional high reliance on coal-powered generation, Japan is shifting away from new coal-fired projects. Several large utility companies, Osaka Gas, Kyushu Electric Power, Tokyo Gas, Idelmitsu Kosa and Chugoku Electric Power, are scrapping their plans for coal-fired power.
These cancellations come as renewable energy is on the rise in Japan and as the government brings in stricter regulations on new coal-fired power plants as part of its energy outlook. Coal power generation is expected to fall to 281 billion kilowatt hours in the 2030 financial year, down from 346 billion kWh in 2017.
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, one of Japan’s largest banks, is reviewing its lending policies for coal-fired power generation. It is said to be guided by OECD standards to lend only to “high-efficiency, ultra-supercritical” coal-fired power plants.
As one of Japan’s biggest suppliers of thermal coal, this fall in demand will significantly hit Australia’s coal export market in the long-term.
There is certainly a reason to continue to rely on coal in the short term to ensure the reliability of power supplies. Given China’s enormous power needs, it is allowing 11 provinces and regions to resume building coal power plants. And the closure date of AGL’s Liddell power plant in NSW’s Hunter Valley has been pushed back by four months.
However, a Macquarie Business School research paper, “How markets will drive the transition to a low-carbon economy”, shows that the long-term business case for new coal projects no longer exists, domestically or globally.
Our research shows the total global wealth creation by 2050 through the development of clean technology patents in areas such as bio-fuels, fuel cells, hydro energy, wind energy, solar energy, and geothermal energy is $13.69 trillion to $20.87 trillion.
China has a clear lead in terms of the underlying technology with over 150,000 renewable energy patents as of 2016. This amounts to 29 per cent of the global total. The next closest country is the US, which has a little over 100,000 patents. Japan and the EU have closer to 75,000 patents each.
While not all patents are useful or valuable, these figures give an indication of how much investment different countries have been putting into clean technology.
The point to realise is that the global transition to renewables means our investments in coal are likely to become “stranded” and eventually these will need to be written down.
But such transitioning takes time, leadership and policy.
Germany’s transition to a low-carbon economy with its “Energiewende” has taken 30 years. It will decommission all its coal plants by 2038. Beijing has stated its intention to clean up its polluted cities, so it will increasingly turn to cleantech for its power supply to improve air quality.
Countries such as China ad Japan – our significant coal customers – see the future, and it’s not coal.
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