Coal

New demand needs new plants, and new coal costs far more.

ICRA estimates new plants will generate power at over Rs 6 per unit, and the seven new coal contracts the state signed last year opened at Rs 5.38 to Rs 6.3. And the gap also widens over time.

Coal's fuel charge rises with coal prices, and that risk sits with the buyer.

So as coal gets pricier, the discomp pays more every year, and the thermal mimic price never changes.

But if fuel costs rise 2.6% a year, The Berkeley researchers estimate new coal could cost 7.4 rupees per unit by 2050.

But, you know, depends on if you're super bullish in American natural gas plays.

Coal.

Pacific Thermal Coal is up 1.5% for the week.

Atlantic Thermal Coal is up 0.9% for the week.

And just a beautiful cup pattern with the handle and starting to break out right now on Atlantic Thermal Coal.

Similar kind of pattern here for Pacific Thermal.

Very bullish looking.

I would say it's probably a bit of an overstatement to suggest that India is switching from coal to solar, at least for the moment anyway.

It's all a bit more subtle than that.

Coal is continuing to support the enormous electricity system India already has, but solar is increasingly providing the electricity needed to expand it.

And that distinction could have enormous implications, because although India is the world's most populous country, its electricity consumption per person is still dramatically lower than that of China, Europe or the United States, which means India's energy system still has an enormous amount of growing to do.

If India followed exactly the same development path that China followed over the last 30 years, we'd all basically be screwed, no two ways about it.

It takes a lot of fuel to heat our homes, preserve our food, and power our gadgets around the clock.

And for 40% of the world, that fuel is cheap, plentiful, and it's called coal.

But coal also releases pollutants into the air, like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, soot, and toxic metals like mercury.

These cause environmental damage like acid rain and serious health problems.

In fact, in 1952, coal burning caused such heavy smog in London that pedestrians couldn't even see their feet, and thousands of people died from ill health.

Since then, many countries have deployed technology to remove most of these pollutants before they reach the air.

But now we have a new air pollution problem on our hands, one that doesn't show up in a cloud of dark smog, but in rising seas, floods, and heat waves.

It's global climate change.

So they're not going to go get really expensive, dirty sources to you know to spite democrats they're they're kind of they have like over the over the long haul we're looking at on balance a much more favorable environment for clean energy

yeah one of the things that i think if you're a young listener you may not appreciate is how big of a role coal played not just in our energy conversations but really kind of in our the national consciousness in in a sense of like especially in a certain region of the country just like Coal was just like the thing, like you had to be pro coal, you had to be pro coal miners.

And it was just like a way of life almost in, you know, the Appalachian region of the country.

And the thing that defeated that was not that we won the cultural battle over whether or not coal miners are virtuous people or not.