China, India, Indonesia and Mongolia have increased their annual coal production by 1.2 billion tonnes since they signed up to reach net zero emissions at the Glasgow Climate conference in 2021.
Australia produces less than 500 million tonnes. So just these four countries have increased their coal production by more than double Australia’s in just three years.
It is becoming more and more clear that when it comes to climate change action, the joke is on us.
Those coal production figures come from the latest Statistical Review of World Energy released last month. It is the recognised Bible of energy statistics. This report shows that all the hot air of politicians telling us that “the world is acting on climate change” are lies.
Since the world signed up net zero emissions global carbon emissions are up by 1.7 billion tonnes.
The world first signed an agreement to “cut” carbon emissions in 2005 at Kyoto. Back then global emissions were at 32 million tonnes per year and they have grown by almost 30 per cent since.
In fairness, some countries have reduced their carbon emissions. The UK’s carbon emissions have fallen by 44 per cent since 2005, France’s by 33 per cent and Germany by 30 per cent. But while they pat themselves on the back for that, all these countries have experienced around a 10 per cent decline in their industrial output.
Almost all the countries that have reduced carbon emissions have only done so thanks to large reductions in their domestic manufacturing output. The people of these countries still consume industrial goods, they are just increasingly made in China, India and other Asian countries where carbon emissions are often higher.
All the talk on climate change has only really led to a change in where the world’s goods are made.
And that shift has been driven by the enormous increase in coal production in Asia. Asian countries have coal in abundance although it is not all of high quality.
It is hard for the average person to understand just how big a 1.2 billion increase in annual coal production is. One way for Australians to understand it is to compare it to the annual production of Adani’s Carmichael coal mine.
Carmichael produces around 10 million tonnes a year, so a 1.2 billion tonne increase in coal production is the equivalent of China, India, Indonesia and Mongolia opening 120 Adani coal mines.
Do you remember all the controversy about the Adani mine? It took over 10 years to get approval. It dominated multiple election contests. And, while our green activists were all distracted by one mine in Central Queensland, the equivalent of 120 of them were being opened just north of us.
If it were not so serious then it would be funny. But while Asia has been opening new coal mines like it is going out of fashion, Australia has reduced its annual coal mining by 15 million tonnes a year.
Coal mining in Australia could continue to fall as older mines reach their end of life and new ones are not built because there is no political certainty that they will be supported.
That will not worry our Asian customers too much. They have enormous reserves of coal and no doubt one of the reasons for the unprecedented surge in their coal production is because they are less confident that they can rely on Australia for coal.
The losers from this would be Australia and the environment. We would lose the jobs and income from our nation’s second biggest export. And, the environment would suffer too because the coal produced in most Asian countries contains less energy than Australian coal and thus produces more emissions for every unit of electricity produced.
Maybe only then we will all realise that you cannot become wealthy from producing climate change action plans.
Hon Matt Canavan
Senator for QLD
