[HN Gopher] No bids for over 70% of Indian coal mines up for auc...
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No bids for over 70% of Indian coal mines up for auction
Author : DocFeind
Score : 90 points
Date : 2021-07-10 20:59 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| arcticbull wrote:
| Have we considered sending in the bitcoin mining P/E firms? An
| opportunity for vertical integration.
| reader_mode wrote:
| Bitcoin is way to volatile for that kind of a commitment - it's
| short term pump & dump I would say.
| kolinko wrote:
| Bitcoin miners already purchuased at least one coal plant.
| seriousquestion wrote:
| Bitcoin is 12 years old, and supposedly 60% is held by long
| term investors.
|
| https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/bitcoin-market-data-
| exc...
| ipaddr wrote:
| And only 2 million coins are left.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm pleasantly surprised this hasn't happened after reading
| this recently: https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-miners-are-
| giving-new-l...
| hedora wrote:
| Since they need two bids to proceed, does anyone else want to go
| in with me, bid a dollar, and immediately abandon the mines?
| rrmm wrote:
| The mines probably come with liabilities of all sorts.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| That does sound like fun but I'm sure there's a minimum bid.
| Hippocrates wrote:
| It might work if posted on /r/wallstreetbets
| Permit wrote:
| I am not familiar with the environmental laws in India but in
| Canada you are often on the hook for closing down and cleaning
| up a site once it is abandoned (that is, you can't just walk
| away from it). My understanding is this can cost hundreds of
| thousands of dollars.
|
| I recently met someone who was leasing oil wells (edit: natural
| gas, not oil) that lacked sufficient pressure to pump gas into
| a pipeline. The wells still had enough pressure that you could
| use them as an immediate fuel source so they were hooking up a
| few cryptocurrency mining rigs to a generator there. Apparently
| the companies who own the wells like this because they don't
| immediately have to declare the wells abandoned and pay the
| cleanup fees.
| gruez wrote:
| >so they were hooking up a few cryptocurrency mining rigs to
| a generator there
|
| The generators can run off crude oil directly?
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| It does burn so a
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil_engine works okay,
| it's just not as clean or efficient as an engine with tight
| temperature/pressure tolerances for very specific fractions
| of the fuel.
| Animats wrote:
| Probably a natural gas well, not an oil well. Few oil wells
| generate oil under pressure. (Those "gusher" were found and
| drained decades ago, most of them more than a century ago.
| See "Spindletop")
| Permit wrote:
| You're right, I was mistaken in the original post. I
| should have said natural gas, not oil.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I saw the same with old chemical plants in Germany. Some
| companies preferred to keep an office active, just to keep
| the site open. Closing it would have meant clean up costs in
| 10s of millions.
| bredren wrote:
| In the US there is regulated process, soil testing and
| cleanup costs in decommissioning underground gasoline storage
| containers. Average cleanup is $130k. This does affect
| property values and can take a while.
|
| https://www.epa.gov/ust/frequent-questions-about-
| underground...
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Seeing the responses to this, maybe governments should
| require people opening these types of places to put down a
| deposit for the cost of the cleanup in advance.
| youeseh wrote:
| Since the government of India is setting targets for net coal
| export, you'll likely have to meet output quotas. So, good
| luck! :D
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Ok, how about does anybody have a need for a big hole in the
| ground? Swimming pool? Storage? Carbon sequestration, maybe even?
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Question for those who know better: isn't the Indian coal
| industry rife with mafia activity, or is that all in the past?
| idlecool wrote:
| My dad worked in coal India for around 3 decades, and I grew up
| in one of the townships. I have never heard of Mafia
| involvement. However, I have seen coal being stolen from moving
| trains that transport coal. They are mostly locals who probably
| sell it or use it themselves, but it doesn't account to much
| AFAIK.
| manishsharan wrote:
| I really find it hard to believe that you have never heard of
| Mafia involvement in Cola mines of Bihar even though your dad
| worked in Coal India. However just because you did not hear
| of it does not mean it doesn't exist.
|
| There is a while section about this on Wikipedia.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_Raj
|
| And this : https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&u
| rl=http://...
|
| Also this : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suryadeo_Singh
|
| There are also a bunch of Bollywood movies with Coal Mafia as
| a background. "Gunday", though not about coal Mafia, is
| pretty entertaining.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Coal usage peaked ~2013. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_coal
|
| Just in the past two weeks:
|
| Germany closing even new coal plants -
| https://reneweconomy.com.au/german-coal-plant-closes-after-j...
|
| Philipines will not build new coal plants due to economics. They
| will instead invest in grid scale storage and renewables -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-10/biggest-p...
|
| It's mostly economics. When other generation and storage systems
| drop by orders of magnitude in price in just 2 decades it throws
| the old equations out. There's no economic reason to build a coal
| plant today.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2018/12/03/plu...
| tpmx wrote:
| > Germany closing even new coal plants
|
| Please don't greenwash Germany's horrible energy strategy
| failure after they prematurely closed nuclear plants because of
| Fukushima-based populism. They brought a new coal 1.1 GW coal
| power plant online last year that they expect to run until at
| least 2038. (Datteln 4:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/deutschland-klima-uniper-
| idD...)
| melling wrote:
| 38% of the electricity globally is coal. We've got quite a long
| way to go.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Because of sunk costs (not in the fallacy sense). Doesn't
| mean it makes sense to build a new one.
|
| Agreed we have a long way to go :)
| melling wrote:
| We are building lots of coal plants globally.
|
| https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-
| emissi...
| jes5199 wrote:
| I don't understand why China is building so many coal
| plants - for several years it's been reported that they
| run them way, way under capacity.
| jdhn wrote:
| Jobs program, perhaps?
| newsclues wrote:
| Don't we use coal for two main things? Energy and steel?
|
| Do we have a replacement for coal in the steel industry?
| pengaru wrote:
| Cement production is another big one.
| kleton wrote:
| And cement
| gus_massa wrote:
| We had a very big steel mill here in Argentina that had
| it's own forest to grow eucalyptus, and make coal with them
| and use that in the steel production. From
| https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aceros_Zapla_S.A.
|
| translation> _It had 15,000 ha of forest with 30 million
| eucalyptus trees to extract the coal necessary in the
| process, for which the town of "Centro Forestal" was
| build._
| ph0rque wrote:
| > Do we have a replacement for coal in the steel industry?
|
| Still in R&D admittedly, but micronuclear should do the job
| well.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| how does micronuclear replace coal for producing carbon
| steels?
| ph0rque wrote:
| Here's an example research article: https://www.sciencedi
| rect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605...
| 6nf wrote:
| Ah I think you're misunderstanding the question about the
| steel. Steel contains quite a bit of carbon (the element
| carbon) dissolved in the iron, on the order of 1% of the
| steel bulk is elemental carbon. You need to get that
| carbon from somewhere and coal is good source of carbon.
|
| No research is going to replace the carbon in steel with
| something clean, your article is about the energy used in
| steel production and not the elemental carbon going into
| the steel itself.
| ph0rque wrote:
| I see, thanks for the clarification. Yes, I was thinking
| of coal solely as a source of energy (heat, specifically)
| to melt steel.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I read an old paper from the 60's on electrowinning iron
| from a sulfate solution. They claimed around 4.5kwh/kg.
| Read a more recent paper (2019) reporting on same process
| with modern separators[1] got energy requirements down to
| 3.5kwh/kg.
|
| 3.5 kwh/kg is probably 20 cents worth of electricity.
|
| [1] Separators are used to isolate the anode and cathode in
| electrolytic cells in order to suppress side reactions.
| Modern separators allow specific ions to pass while
| blocking others.
| tialaramex wrote:
| You need carbon to make steel, but it doesn't necessarily
| have to be from coal. So we definitely _could_ replace
| coal, but that may be very expensive at today 's scale.
| Even if we can use trees rather than coal, we are avoiding
| the release of carbon which was previously locked away
| underground.
|
| Also, coal we dig up is much more suitable for one or the
| other purpose. If you mine thermal coal, the steel plant
| doesn't want it, they want metallurgical coal. If your
| country has a steel plant, and a thermal coal mine, you
| will export thermal coal from the mine and import
| metallurgical coal to run the steel plant. Well, if nobody
| buys your thermal coal, the coal mine shuts, even if you
| still have a steel plant.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I don't know if he is right, but Bill Gates has been saying
| that we should basically accept that certain kinds of steel
| will never be made with a net zero process. We need steel
| though, so we will have to offset those carbon costs.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| The linked article says:
|
| _The Department of Energy in late 2020 declared a moratorium
| on endorsing new coal-fired power plants as the Southeast Asian
| nation seeks to shift to a more flexible power supply and
| reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030._
|
| You don't need a moratorium on something that makes no economic
| sense. This is a decision that takes into account externalities
| (and that's great!)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > You don't need a moratorium on something that makes no
| economic sense.
|
| Yes, you do. Some will make decisions that are uneconomic
| because captive rate payers have no choice (this is prevalent
| with coal in the US MISO and PJM ISO grids) but to pay, and
| those making them are doing so to support coal even while in
| its death throes. About 160 cities are locked into the
| prairie state coal plant in southern Illinois (one of the
| largest coal plants east of the Mississippi) because of bonds
| they issued and debt they've taken on they can't afford to
| accelerate payback on to close the plant early.
|
| https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2021/6/4/22517456/prai.
| ..
|
| TLDR You have to kill coal with extreme prejudice, not just
| hope economic sanity is enough, because the evidence has
| demonstrated it isn't.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| > Some will make decisions that are uneconomic because
| captive rate payers have no choice
|
| If that's the case then you have bigger problems. Rather
| than applying bandages on top of a broken system you should
| figure out how to align incentives.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| People who profit today and won't be here tomorrow cannot
| have their prioritizes aligned with mitigating climate
| change. If I were to want to go with some hyperbole, I'd
| call them apathetic antagonists.
|
| The system is broken _because you can't align the
| incentives_.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| A) that's not true, you can design proper incentive
| structures
|
| and
|
| B) I thought the claim was that coal is uneconomic
| regardless of environmental considerations
| [deleted]
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| I'll point out that the 2013 peak predates many of these
| environmental moratoriums to phase out coal.
|
| I'm cynical and jaded so i feel that the only reason we're
| finally getting some traction on the environmental side is
| that the poor economics of coal made the environmental battle
| not worth fighting anymore. Effectively the coal lobby is
| disintegrating at this point.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The bidding process and ownership obligations are probably just
| convoluted enough to dissuade the small players. You see this
| sort of thing all the time when all manner of goods, equipment or
| land goes to public auction.
|
| A small player would jump at the chance to buy a mine for cheap
| if they were reasonably confident they could actually walk out of
| the deal owning a mine for cheap.
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(page generated 2021-07-10 23:00 UTC)