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By Jo Nova
What a difference an oil war makes…
Five weeks after it started, suddenly Australians are noticing the bonanza under our feet all along.
That most hated thing, the unthinkable brown coal, could save the day if we would only stop beating it down with blunt sticks and Voodoo dolls.
In 2016 Geoscience Australia estimated we have so much brown coal we could keep burning the deposits we already know about at the current rate for our whole lives, and our children’s lives, and their children’s lives too. We could keep going for 40 generations.
“Australia’s recoverable brown coal EDR did not change during 2016. The majority is located within the Latrobe Valley (Victoria). At 2016 production levels, Australia’s recoverable brown coal EDR is expected to last more than 1000 years.”
We burned it to make electricity all year in 2016 but the total amount was so insignificant no one counting national resources could even notice.
Look at the size of the Gippsland Basin deposit. It’s almost like God has a sense of humour putting all that in there so close to socialist HQ.
https://www.ga.gov.au/aecr2025/coal
Brown coal is the cheapest fuel there is […]
Image by Semevent from Pixabay
By Jo Nova
The trend is spreading. Coal, the stranded asset of a bygone era, is hot property again everywhere. All it took was a few weeks of an energy crisis, and decades of brainwashing against coal is evaporating.
On Friday, I wrote about how countries like Japan, Korea, and India were redirecting themselves towards coal power. Now Bloomberg, Fortune, and others are reporting this trend. As I write, Italy is considering delaying the closure of all its coal plants til 2038, Germany is reopening old coal plants. Thailand is restarting two coal plants it only shut down last year. Bangladesh is going to run its coal plants at max capacity all summer.
And the Ecoworriers are starting to fear this crisis will trigger a more permanent shift back to coal — which it absolutely will — not because of ‘sunk costs’ or any of the other excuses the greenies tell themselves, but because the oil crisis will break the sacred exorcism spell cast upon coal. Governments have been shocked at how vulnerable they are without fossil fuel energy.
People might be ordering EVs, but governments want fossil fuels.
Activists should be panicking […]
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by Jo Nova
The Iranian oil and gas crisis is causing a sudden realignment of national energy policy with reality.
Spare a thought for the poor Ecoworriers who are hoping the Straits of Hormuz will finally be The Springboard to Renewable Heaven. Any day now, they think, the world will wake up to the wonders of low density energy captured in a million square kilometers of industrial glory…
Instead, just like the Ukraine War, the middle east crisis reminds everyone of the importance of fossil fuels.
After thirty years of international pogrom against coal — it only takes a few weeks of an energy crisis to explode propaganda that was six feet deep.
Japan, Korea, India, Europe, The Phillipines, (and that’s just in the last few days) have all announced they will be using more coal to make up for shortages in gas from the Middle East.
And even if the oil crisis ended tomorrow, things are not going back they way they were. The shock of discovering how vulnerable your nation is will leave a mark. National Energy Security is back on the agenda.
Japan to Allow More Coal-fired Power to Cope With Energy […]
Photo by Petar Milošević
By Jo Nova
Coal, it turns out, is an infinite chemical wellspring, being converted into everything from plastic, to diesel, jet fuel, gas, methanol and fertilizer. There is no way, just no chance, that China will leave this bounty locked underground. And why are we?
The idea of converting coal to liquid fuel sounds like an expensive exotic chemical reaction that is barely used. If people have even heard of it, it’s mainly because the Nazi’s were so desperate for liquid fuel to power their tanks and armored cars, they converted coal in a large plant that became a wartime target in World War II. It produced 92% of Germany’s air fuel, and 50% of its petroleum. Who knew, those Messerschmidts were coal powered? Later South Africa used it in the 1980s in response to an oil embargo, and they still do.
Quietly China has developed a giant coal-to-liquids industry to reduce its strategic vulnerability to an oil shock or a wartime embargo, and the volume is astounding. Accurate numbers are hard to obtain, but the IEA estimates that every year China is converting 380 million tons of coal into fuel, ammonia […]
By Jo Nova
Foreign readers may not be aware of the bunfight for petrol and especially diesel fuel in Australia. Three weeks in, and the energy and exporting giant of coal and gas is unraveling at the seams. Regional towns and some servo‘s are running out, farmers aren’t sure if they will be able to seed this year, and miners are starting to lay off staff. Three weeks.
It could be something to do with forward planning.
While the rest of the world has 90 days stockpile, Australia imports 90% of its oil, and has about three weeks fuel left. Obviously, our great leaders looked at our remote, low density island with an economy based on heavy industry and said “who needs diesel”?
David Archibald has spent 50 years around the oil industry and he has a plan
“There are no impediments to Australia becoming completely autarkic in liquids fuel production, and also petrochemical precursors and LPG, and ammonium sulphate for fertiliser.”
— David Archibald
The method as described in The Solution To Our Fuel Crisis has three main parts:
Australia already produces oil as a byproduct of the North West […]
By Jo Nova
This below, is the latest graph of coal plants in operation in the world today.
Luckily there is one place on Earth where carbon emissions are irrelevant.
Global Energy Monitor: Coal Plant Tracker (GW)
While most CO2 emissions cause wars, droughts, and kill eagles, there are some CO2 emissions that just create refrigerators, so nobody minds.
Where is that Boycott, Divest, Sanction China Movement?
China has 1,271 gigawatts of operating coal power capacity, over half of the world’s total.
The UN has met every year for twenty-eight years to badger everyone to stop using coal to appease the Goddess of Trace Gases and Weird Weather — all while China became the coal furnace of the world.
Or perhaps The UN met every year, so China could do exactly that? Lord above, imagine if the bureaucratic diplomats of the West could be bought off so easily by trophies, trinkets and photo-opportunities? Or perhaps they were naively trapped in cheap honeypot schemes? As a trade strategy, it would be a bargain. And it surely was.
Somehow life on Earth depends on Extinction Rebellion protestors, but they can’t seem to find the Chinese Embassy.
And just so […]
Shuozhou coal power plant. by Kleineolive
By Jo Nova
It’s almost like China doesn’t give a toss about climate change, eh?
Just quietly, while everyone was gushing tears over a two year extension to a fifty year old Australian plant, China added a gargantuan number of brand new coal plants.
Australia’s total coal fleet stands at 26 gigawatts in capacity. Yet China added three times that capacity in a single year.
Overall, China brought 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity online in 2025, a sharp uptick from previous years, according to the joint report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and Global Energy Monitor.
The graph below represents how many gigawatts were added, but only in the largest turbines size. China added 52 gigawatts of energy from one gigawatt units. Presumably the rest of the 78GW came from smaller sized turbines. And here’s the thing, while everyone will pretend this is the peak and tell us “it will decline soon”, another 83 gigawatts of coal plants has already started construction, and another 161GW is newly proposed or applied for.
These coal plants are apparently only being used at 50% capacity, […]
By Jo Nova
Humans used more coal in 2025 than at any point in human history.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) solemnly announced that global coal demand reached another all time record high in 2025. “However, it is expected to decline by 2030 amid competition from other energy sources” they say, just like they say every year when coal hits a new record.
The IEA are a fully paid up part of The Blob– their funding comes from taxpayers in rich nations — so their role is to manage the narrative on energy to keep that funding flowing. Every year that coal hits a record high, the IEA also projects that coal use will plateau or fall. Back in 2019, they said “Over the next five years, global coal demand is forecast to remain stable.” Which it didn’t. In 2020 they said “Coal’s partial recovery is set to fade after 2021”. And it didn’t do that either. In 2022 they said “Global coal demand is set to plateau through 2025”. Yet again, demand for coal keeps rising.
Every year they do some version of the plateau graph (below) which includes their wish-list forecast of coal trending flat or down.
This […]
Nick Pitsas, CSIRO
By Jo Nova
The Zombie coal plant lives again
Eraring coal plant is Australia’s largest coal power station. Obviously it’s a polluting monstrosity that kills koalas and is more expensive than solar panels. It’s also old and yet, for some reason, when it was supposed to shut down in August last year, the government dished out nearly half a billion dollars to keep it running for another two years until 2027.
Now, in a second round of baffling electrical fever, the NSW government has twisted the arm of Origin Energy to make sure they don’t shut the coal plant until 2029. All four coal units will be kept running.
Eraring supplies nearly a quarter of the electricity used in our largest industrial state, but apparently the wonderland new renewables grid isn’t quite ready, even though it’s 2026 and we are supposed to be aiming for 82% unreliable energy by 2030. But cruelly, the renewables revolution hit a wall and the Snowy Hydro Scheme hit an unmodeled rock. Only three new wind farms have been built in Australia last year, and everyone hates the interconnector transmission lines.
If the renewables grid was utterly failing, and the […]
By Jo Nova
Coal is not and never was a stranded asset
Such is the demand for electricity, Donald Trump wants every reliable generator he can get.
One coal plant in Colorado was a week away from closure on Dec 31, when Donald Trump pulled it back from the brink:
Colorado’s coal plant closures and clean air policies go too far, Trump’s EPA says while rejecting plans
—The Colorado Sun
In December, President Donald Trump’s Department of Energy issued an emergency order demanding that Tri-State Generation’s Craig Unit 1 coal plant stay open past the long-planned Dec. 31 shuttering date. Tri-State is now fixing broken parts at the plant, which it had previously not planned to do given the closure, and will bring it back online. The co-op generator says it has not heard any plan on who will pay the up to $80 million annual cost of running the plant in 2026.
The EPA on Friday cited the Department of Energy’s emergency action in calling out Colorado. “These plants are vital to delivering reliable and affordable energy to Colorado families and meeting the surging national energy demand,” the EPA announcement said.
[…]
By Jo Nova
Panic-stations in Renewable Utopia
Even the AEMO, our green grid operators, have realized Australia is not ready to shut down the last coal plants by 2037 which was the plan up until five minutes ago.
Things must be desperate. After 20 years of telling us how wind power was absolutely, definitely cheaper — for the first time, an official admitted the blasphemy — “wind is becoming too expensive”.
Now they tell us.
Reality for ALP as coal will be needed until 2049, says AEMO
By Colin Packham and Richard Ferguson, The Australian
Coal will be needed to stabilise the energy grid until 2049 under an extraordinary 12-year extension of the fossil fuel that threatens Labor’s net-zero target, as the green-energy revolution leads to a 100 per cent explosion in power transmission costs.
In a 115-page document that mentions “net zero” just once, the Australian Energy Market Operator has warned that wind is increasingly becoming too expensive and there is a risk the nation is overbuilding transmission lines through rural and regional Australia.
So, “Net Zero” has vanished from the pages, and what appears in its place is a 100% explosion in transmission […]
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By Jo Nova
At the top of the Magic Faraway Tree, the cheapest form of energy needs more subsidies. Just keep pouring the money…
The Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) has finally quietly admitted that they’ve given up on wind and solar power becoming cheaper than coal. Instead, renewables are so uncompetitive they will need another ten years of subsidies, or however long it takes until the last coal plant shuts off.
It’s so revealing. Once upon a time they might have thought (or at least pretended) that subsidies were there to get the unreliable generators ‘over the development hump’ so they could compete in a free market. But after 20 years of subsidies, there are no new economies of scale left to wait for. We got to the bottom of the cost efficiency curve and we’re going up the other side. Costs are now rising as the new projects have to go to far flung fields and wait for impossible transmission towers to appear. Windmills kept getting bigger until there was a nasty surprise in the maintenance bills that wiped 36% off Siemens shares in a single day.
AEMC opine about getting back to a free […]
Art by Syaifulptak
By Jo Nova
Queensland has opened the veil of Sauron — toying with planetary ostracism, death, fire, and cosmic doom.
The State Government shattered the taboo, asking: “Should we build the pumped hydro to bend the jet streams — or save $26 billion dollars and keep the coal plants instead?
In a brave move they added up the costs of storing sacred green electrons in an artificial lake upon the mount, and decided they’d rather save the money and just stick with perfectly serviceable, reliable coal plants. Turn on the lights.
This move will save every household in Queensland $1000.
Somewhere, a thousand bureaucrats are shrieking. The government are summoning forbidden megawatts from the underworld. They’re calling back the black fire! And not just for a few cowardly years, but for two whole decades. The oracles of Paris will not forgive this.
Queensland scraps Labor power plan in favour of ‘$26bn cheaper option’
By Sarah Elks, The Australian
Queenslanders will be saved $26bn – or $1000 a household – by keeping coal-fired power stations open for longer and scrapping or downsizing enormous pumped hydro schemes, Treasury analysis suggests.
Energy Minister […]
Plant Bowen by Sam Nash
By Jo Nova
The Greens will be apoplectic
Donald Trump pays no lip service to the tender heart of the Eco-Blob bureaucrat. Old coal plants are going to be kept running. Plants that have stopped will be reopened and modernized. New coal plants will be built. It’s all there. Some plants will be converted so they can switch between different fuels seamlessly.
It’s almost like the US is in a race to claw back industry and manufacturing, and wants to be world leaders in a breakthrough new technology that burns energy for breakfast.
This is what a true leader does — they make the right choice while all the minions are aghast, then years later everyone copies them.
Trump administration opens more land for coal mining, offers $625M to boost coal-fired power plants
By Matthew Daly, AP News
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration said Monday it will open 13 million acres of federal lands for coal mining and provide $625 million to recommission or modernize coal-fired power plants as President Donald Trump continues his efforts to reverse the years-long decline in the U.S. coal industry.
By Jo Nova
The Victorian state electricity grid is running close to the wire
They’ve run their largest coal plants into the ground — to the point of neglect where an air duct “detached from the boiler end and fell to the floor”. So one 380MW unit will be out of action at Yallourn for two weeks. And it’s just the latest in an ongoing series of failures.
We are the Renewable Crash Test Dummy — this is what the unfree, fixed, forced market produces when the best assets in a system are treated like planet-wrecking trolls.
A Hi-Tech transition, my foot…
An Air duct collapses at Yallourn Power plant. ABC News https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-09/yallourn-power-station-outage-air-duct-collapse/105394406
The Net Zero forced transition is just vandalism of a perfectly good electricity grid.
The whole 1,450 MW plant at Yallourn makes 20% of the state’s electricity, but has been described as “limping” along into retirement –– (a lot like Victorian manufacturing.)
One report on the power station found that at least one of its four generators was out of action for a third of the time last year. Yallourn was supposed to close in 2032, but under siege from heavily subsidized unreliable generators, […]
Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant, Taiwan. Photo by Jnlin
By Jo Nova
The energy situation is flipping on a dime around the world
Political entities are waking up to the need for reliable mass power. Consider the whiplash in Taiwan. They closed the last of six nuclear reactors on May 17th, marking the end of a nuclear era that started in 1970. But, hey ho, two weeks later, they’ve decided to hold a referendum on whether to restart the same plant. The vote is set for August 23.
Taiwan Plans Referendum on Nuclear Energy Reversal
By Tsvetana Paraskov, OilPrice
Taiwan will hold in August a referendum on whether the just-shuttered last nuclear reactor should be restarted once safety checks are completed, in a major reversal of the country’s policy amid energy security concerns.
Since 2018, Taiwan has shut down four other nuclear reactors and cancelled construction of two others following a referendum in 2021.
Earlier this month, Taiwan’s Parliament amended the country’s nuclear power act to allow plant operators to apply for a 20-year license renewal beyond the existing 40-year limit. This legislative amendment effectively opens the door to […]
By Jo Nova
Trump switches on the giant dormant coal infrastructure of the US
In the last twenty years 770 coal turbines have been switched off in the US, and Donald Trump wants to turn as many back on as he can.
Any moment now President Trump is expected to sign an executive order that will boost coal mining, keep old coal power stations running and restart shuttered coal plants. The word is that the US government will define coal as a “mineral” which allows him to use presidential wartime authority to speed up approvals for coal mines, and to bypass environmental red tape and even prioritize exploration and mining on federal lands.
US agencies will be told to rescind any policies that aim to “transition away from coal” or “otherwise establish preferences against using fossil fuels”. The country with the largest known coal reserves in the world is now planning to increase coal exports.
Furthermore Trump will ask the Energy Department to consider whether coal should be listed as a ‘critical mineral’ — something described as a ‘coveted status’ which activates even more emergency powers.
Shares of coal companies in the US are up 11 to 18%, and […]
By Jo Nova
Today’s magic trick is how to make electricity look cheaper by taking money from children
Tomorrow — we pretend to control inflation by printing more money.
The Labor Party tried to control the weather with our power stations and promised us it be would cheaper. For some reason that every engineer can explain, they damaged the electricity grid and electricity got more expensive.
In order to hide this, they have to borrow money to pay us so they can pretend electricity is slightly less expensive, and inflation figures are not so scary. Since our children will pay off that debt one day somehow, the Labor Government is nicking the money from babies and telling us how compassionate they are.
“This is hip pocket help for households, and it recognises that people are still under pressure,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers told the ABC.
“Without our assistance and without our interventions, electricity would be more expensive.”
More expensive than what Jim?
The next magical $150 electricity rebate to households will cost $1.8 billion dollars. Think of it as a performance art, a piece of theatre, or a band-aid on a gaping wound. For Australians this will be the third […]
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By Jo Nova
With exquisite timing, another price rise in Australian electricity arrived just in time for the next election
As the Opposition point out the Labor government went to the last election telling us 97 times how they would make our electricity $275 cheaper, but with the latest rise, it’ll cost more like $1,300 more than it did before the Labor party were elected. Prices look set to rise about two or three times faster than inflation. But coming after big blockbuster rises two years in a row, even a 5 or 10% rise is nasty.
The Australian Energy Regulator (AER). Being part of The Blob, diplomatically and uselessly blame nearly every part of the system, as though this is just bad luck, even though they must know exactly which single dominant factor has changed in the last 30 years.
Average wholesale market spot prices increased across 2024, impacted by factors such as high demand, coal generator and network outages, and low solar and wind output that drove high price events across DMO regions. These high price events have also affected the price of wholesale electricity contracts for 2025–26.
Meanwhile Minister Chris […]
Henan S88 Expressway Photo by Windmemories
By Jo Nova
Does this look like a country that cares about carbon emissions?
President Xi said he would “strictly control” coal power from 2021 to 2025, and he has strictly controlled… a huge increase in coal power.
President Xi: — Reuters (April 2021) –“We will strictly limit the increase in coal consumption over the 14th five-year plan period (2021-2025) and phase it down in the 15th five-year plan period (2026-2030),” he said.
But nobody cares either:
China’s 2024 coal power construction hits 10-year high, researchers say
SINGAPORE, Feb 13 (Reuters) – China started construction on 94.5 gigawatts of coal-fired power in 2024, the highest volume of new builds since 2015, hampering the country’s transition away from fossil fuels, researchers said…
The surge came despite a record-breaking increase in renewable capacity last year and could make it harder to connect clean power to the grid, said the report, published by CREA and the Global Energy Monitor (GEM) think tank.
China also promised its emissions will peak in 2030, right when a whole squadron of these new plants will have barely started operation. But it’s OK because […]
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