After riding China’s demand train for nearly two decades, Asia’s coal industry is looking to a future of smaller markets and slimmer pickings, as buying declines in the world’s second-biggest economy and climate change concerns blunt demand.
“Coal will continue to provide low-cost energy. We are looking at increasing demand in Southeast Asia, so we are still positive,” said Hendri Tan, marketing director at PT Adaro Indonesia, a unit of PT Adaro Energy , Indonesia’s second-biggest coal producer. Indonesia itself is expected to add some 50 million tonnes a year of coal-fired power demand by 2023, he said, a rise of 55 per cent that would make it one of Asia’s biggest consumers.
As China’s manufacturing might grew, so too did its hunger for electricity, turning it into a net thermal coal importer around 2004. That was a bonanza for miners and helped establish Coaltrans in Bali as the industry’s main event in Asia. Staring at prospects of tougher conditions ahead, Indonesia’s large thermal coal miners are diversifying into other geographies and other industries, Sacha Winzenried, a partner at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, told Reuters.
Common sense tells us to use Natural Gas as it has half the emissions of coal until renewables can power the grid - as the G20 recommended...but common sense is in short supply...