Funding the industry campaign from money that otherwise would have been paid to state governments as mining royalties has outraged the Federal Opposition and the coal industry's critics.

"It is a huge shame that Coal21 funding, which was mean to go into genuine CCS research, is now being used to finance advertising and political campaigns," Labor's environment spokesman Mark Butler said.

Australia Institute chief economist Richard Denniss said it was "scandalous".

"Every dollar spent on advertising as part of the coal industry campaign was a dollar that should have gone into consolidated revenue," he said.

"Citizens funded a propaganda campaign with money that would otherwise have gone into public revenue to fund schools and hospitals."

NSW Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham said it was "an outrage that royalties that should have gone to funding police, schools and hospitals had instead gone into propping up the clean coal myth and the PR campaign of a dying industry".

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-20/coal-advertising-funded-by-money-m...

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A dying industry? Never, unless we kill it like the half-brother of that dictator in North Korea!... I've see lively eels in the Centennial "Parklands" ponds wriggle far less than the coal industry which has been well subsidised by successive governments worldwide — not unlike the new arrivals of immigrants on a sunny day throw bits of bread and mince meat at the murky waters...

It hits you in the face and clings to you. It makes tall buildings whine as their air conditioning plants struggle to cope. It makes the streets deserted and the ice-cold salons of corner pubs get crowded with people who don’t like beer. It is the Aussie heatwave: and it is no joke.

Temperatures in the western suburbs of Sydney, far from the upmarket beachside glamour, reached 47C (117F) last week, topping the 44C I experienced there the week before. For reference, if it reached 47C in the middle of the Sahara desert, that would be an unusually hot day.

For Sydney, 2017 was the hottest January on record. This after 2016 was declared the world’s hottest year on record. Climate change, even in some developed societies, is becoming climate disruption – and according to a UN report, one of the biggest disruptions may only now be getting under way.

....

Compare all this – the science, the modelling, the economic foresight and the attempt to design multilateral blueprint – with the actions of the jackass who runs Australia’s finance ministry.

Scott Morrison barged into the parliament chamber to wave a lump of coal at the Labor and Green opposition benches, taunting them: “Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared. It’s coal. It was dug up by men and women who work in the electorate of those who sit opposite.” Coal, argues the Australian conservative government, has given the economy “competitive energy advantage for more than 100 years”. Labor and the Greens had called, after the Paris climate accord, for an orderly shutdown of the coal-fired power stations that produce 60% of the country’s energy.

The Aussie culture war over coal is being fuelled by the resurgence of the white-supremacist One Nation party, led by Pauline Hanson, which is pressuring mainstream conservatives to drop commitments to the Paris accord and, instead, launch a “royal commission into the corruption of climate science”, which its members believe is a money-making scam.

All over the world, know-nothing xenophobes are claiming – without evidence – that climate science is rigged. Their goal is to defend coal-burning energy, promote fracking, suppress the development of renewable energies and shatter the multilateral Paris agreement of 2015.

Opposition to climate science has become not just the badge of honour for far-right politicians like Ukip’s Paul Nuttall. It has become the central tenet of their appeal to unreason.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/20/sweltering-aussies...

see also: 

A coal lobby group has claimed using "clean coal" would be a cheaper way to lower carbon emissions than renewable energy sources.

It comes as the Federal Government contemplates how to change the rules for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), which currently is not allowed to invest in clean coal.

The Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute's Asia-Pacific general manager Alex Zapantis said his proposal was more economically viable than renewable energy.

"If you compare apples with apples, which really needs to consider the cost of reliable 24/7 energy, what you find actually is that carbon capture storage is at least competitive," Mr Zapantis said.

"In many instances [the cost is] lower cost than implementing renewable technologies such as wind and solar."

Mr Zapantis said buying enough batteries to keep renewable power supplied to everyone would cost more than the process of stripping carbon from coal plant emissions and storing it underground.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-21/clean-coal-cheaper-than-renewable-...

Comparing lumps of coal with oranges or apples is not the way to go...

clean coal...

https://twitter.com/mdavidcartoons

Electricity retailers ERM Power and Alinta Energy have opted to pay more than $130 million in penalties, rather than meeting their renewable energy obligations, raising fresh questions about the operation of the Renewable Energy Target (RET).

• RET compliance rate falls from 99pc to 94 pc in 2016
• 15 electricity retailers failed to surrender correct number of renewable energy certificates
• Eight retailers failed to surrender a single certificate, copping $8m in penalties

The Clean Energy Regulator (CER), which administers the RET, has released data showing the compliance rate for the scheme has fallen from more than 99 per cent in previous years to 94 per cent in 2016.

According to the data, 15 retailers paid a shortfall penalty last year for failing to surrender the correct number of renewable energy certificates, but ERM's fee was by far the highest at $123.5 million, followed by Alinta Energy, which paid $7.9 million.

Eight of those retailers, including QEnergy Limited and Next Business Energy, completely failed to meet their obligations, not surrendering a single certificate, and incurred more than $8 million in penalties combined.

CER chairwoman Chloe Munroe said the fall in the compliance rate did not detract from the overall effectiveness of the scheme but said it was "disappointing" some retailers had chosen to pay the shortfall penalty.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-23/erm-power-alinta-pay-penalties-rat...

This "penalty" is a form of "carbon tax", except if you're poor and getting your energy from these retailers, you don't get a discount from the government... as you did under the Labor Carbon Pricing system which worked better than the "clean coal" revolution of the nineteenth century Liberal (KONservative) stupid policies — a venture which could be counted as renewable by these morons if we let them...

Some of the worst environmental pollution in the world has been discovered among the World Heritage-listed Blue Mountains, according to researchers from Western Sydney University.

For several years, environmental science lecturer Ian Wright and his team has been studying the effect of the Clarence Colliery on the Wollangambe River, which runs deep within the Wollemi National Park.

Since the 1980s the operators of the underground coal mine, Centennial Coal, have been allowed to discharge mine waste into the river under its environmental licence.

Dr Wright said they discovered pollution not just at the discharge point, but 22 kilometres downstream, right in the heart of the World Heritage-listed area.

"This is very, very sick," he said.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-26/blue-mountains-pollution-mine-woll...

Thirteen months ago, we made some guesses about what a replacement for the Clean Power Plan might look like. We speculated the new rule would be the sort of “inside the fenceline” policy preferred by the industry--one where coal plants are only required to make marginal improvements, basically just upgrading existing plants to run more efficiently. Such an approach, which makes coal plants more profitable to run and would keep them running for longer, would ultimately lead to even higher levels of pollution than if there was no policy at all. 

A couple weeks later we looked at the shady math used to justify repealing the CPP, and how that played into Bob Murray’s plans (the coal baron for whom Andrew Wheeler lobbied.) 

And back in March, we pointed to legal experts who explained how the EPA will need to do better than the inside-the-fenceline approach if it wants to survive a legal challenge. 

This is all just to say that if you’ve been paying close attention here, you won’t be at all surprised by Emily Holden’s scoop in Politico based on the soon-to-be-published draft CPP replacement plan that itself admits it will lead to more pollution. As we expected, the administration plans on pursuing the fenceline approach that allows for only barely cleaner coal plants to continue polluting for years to come. Also as we expected, they’re not going to consider the international impacts of reducing emissions and plan to cook the books by changing the discount rate so as to downplay the CPP’s benefits for future Americans and ignore the dangers of dirty air by removing the co-benefits of reducing PM2.5 pollution.  

NRDC’s David Doniger put up a great post Monday explaining how this replacement is actually a Dirty Power Plan. One interesting twist Doinger highlights is that the expected policy will not only allow states to set pollution limits, breaking with the existing precedent, but will also allow them to simply opt out of setting standards all together. Doniger notes that in the advance notice of proposed rulemaking published issued late last year, states will be able to exempt coal plants from further regulation for their “remaining useful life.”

It’s interesting that this administration seems okay with throwing states’ rights out when it comes to California’s clean car standards, but gives deference to states when it comes to the Dirty Power Plan. That may sound like a contradiction, but it’s actually indicative of the only discernible element of consistency in the Trump administration.

Despite record high staff turnover under a President who changes his mind more often than his flunkies have to change their cover stories, the administration remains remarkably consistent on one thing: putting polluter profits before public health.

Read more:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/16/1788656/-Sizing-Up-Trump-s-Di...

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In the latest sign of the U.S. coal industry’s declining ability to compete in the power sector, Peabody Energy is now struggling to find electric utility companies who are willing to accept a “clean coal” award that it presents annually.

In an email obtained through a public records request, a Peabody executive explained that it’s “hard these days for utilities to take the praise publicly.”

Peabody Energy, the largest coal mining company in the U.S., has spent years promoting the marketing phrase “clean coal” as part of its effort to convince the public and regulators that utilities should continue operating coal-fired power plants. One of those public relations efforts is Peabody’s presentation of “clean coal” awards each year to electric utilities and other entities at the Power-Gen International Conference.

Those awards have mostly highlighted utilities’ efforts to reduce air pollutants like sulfur dioxide or nitrous oxide at coal plants. A few awards have gone to carbon capture projects, such as Southern Company’s Kemper project. In a December 2016 press release, Peabody said its judges had determined that “the technology holds great promise for future new electric power plants,” despite a New York Times investigation five months earlier that revealed executives had concealed extensive problems from regulators. The Kemper carbon capture project was canceled soon after receiving Peabody’s award, following repeated failures and billions of dollars in cost overruns.

Last week in New Orleans, Peabody Energy announced its latest “clean coal” awards – but this time, it did not include any utility companies. The awards instead went to the Carbon Utilization Research Council, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a professor, and the Electric Power Research Institute.

An email obtained by the Energy and Policy Institute through a public records request shows that Peabody now finds it difficult to give its “clean coal” awards to utility companies.

Read more:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/11/25/utilities-peabody-energy-clean-coa...

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