Coal

Coal. A word that is likely to make any politician tuned to the zeitgeist to break out in hives. Coal is bad. A filthy word from a filthy, bygone era. And yet, reality has a different cut. Global coal demand is at a record high. A record high. And only going up. The International Energy Agency, a body that seems to lose credibility with every forecast it makes, reckoned that coal demand was going to burn through 8.5 billion metric tonnes in 2023. It doesn’t really matter what the number is, what matters is that despite the billions and billions of increasingly worthless fiat currency being flayed on renewable energy, the world is still burning massive amounts of the dirtiest of dirty fossil fuels. Whilst coal use in the US and Europe is falling, the likes of India and China are shovelling the stuff into the furnaces at an unprecedented rate to help meet the needs and expectations of a power-hungry population. As such the IEA, once again, appear to have fudged out their peak demand projections to 2026 when global demand will – close eyes and hum – then roll over. In the grip of a mild winter and ample gas supplies, the TV news people no longer warn in shrill tones to layer up in woolly jumpers, but the energy issue remains a sticky political bun. One of the consequences of the re-ordering of supply lines after Russia went big on Ukraine, was that Europe sucked in US LNG to meet its own needs. The problem is a lot of this LNG came from diverting ships bound for Brazil, South Korea and China. By paying up, Europe basically forced other countries to seek alternatives. Hello COAL! Having been lectured over how energy policy should be shaped, it is unrecorded what leaders in the ‘global south’ said to each other when Germany woke up to its massive air shot on energy supply and its politicians, at the first squeaky bum moment, gave the order to fire up the coal furnaces. Burn baby burn. As the developing world develops, demand goes up as, without energy, there is no growth. None. For some it goes even deeper: energy is life. For too many politicians, it seems, when the rubber hits the road, the cheaper that energy, the better.