Indonesia’s $600 billion plan to shut coal plants struggles for support

GREEN CAPITALI$M NEEDS MORE GREEN

Bloomberg News 

Erick Thohir. Credit: Doc. Ministry of SOEs

Indonesia’s plan to retire its coal-fired power plants over the next three decades and replace them with cleaner energy isn’t drawing support from potential investors.


Southeast Asia’s largest economy will need $600 billion to phase-out 15 gigawatts of coal generation and add a similar amount of renewable capacity over the period, State-owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir said in an interview late Thursday.

The plan is to keep coal fired-power plants running for another decade and then completely shift away from fossil fuels over the following 20 years, Thohir said. Indonesia, the world’s largest exporter of thermal coal, relies on the fuel to generate about 60% of its electricity.

The government has done investor roadshows in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and some European nations to promote its energy-transition plans, Thohir said. Indonesia doesn’t want to rely on bond sales to support the shift, and is looking for direct investment from developed countries, he said.

“But, no one responded to our offer.”

Indonesia’s position on the future of coal power has been a source of confusion for other nations, and is coming into sharper focus with the country hosting this year’s G-20 meeting. While Jakarta offered some support to global efforts to phase out the use of the fuel at the COP26 climate summit last year, it didn’t back a clause calling for an end to the construction or financing of new plants.

Donor countries that visited Indonesia this year raised concerns that President Joko Widodo’s cabinet has been split over the need to end the use of coal, and how to achieve that ambition, officials familiar with the discussions said in May.
Strike a balance

Indonesia wants to strike a balance between boosting economic growth and developing green energy, Thohir said. It’s seeking to reduce demand for fossil fuels by promoting the use of electric vehicles and cooking stoves, as well as developing alternative energy sources, he said.

“We want our energy mix later to consist of electricity, palm-based biodiesel and ethanol, just like Brazil and India,” Thohir said.

To support the plan, the government is proposing to tell state-owned firms to open 700,000 hectares of land for sugar cane crops for producing ethanol and cutting imports. It’s also pushing projects for processing coal into dimethyl ether, a colorless gas that can be used in fuel, in the next three to four years to help lower the nation’s $4 billion-a-year bill for liquefied petroleum gas.

“We must have energy security and we agree for transformation at our own pace, not what other countries wants us to do,” Thohir said.

Coal consuming-countries like Vietnam, South Korea and Poland were among 23 nations that backed an agreement last year to phase out the use of the fuel for electricity generation, although opposition from China and India led to the watering down of a wider COP26 pact that instead focused on reducing consumption.

(By Eko Listiyorini and Fathiya Dahrul, with assistance from Alaric Nightingale)

After South African dam collapse, diamond mine waste to be pumped into historical pit

Reuters |

The Jagersfontein-Charlesville area in the Free State where flooding from a disused mine has caused the evacuation of hundreds of people from their homes and the death of at least one person. Credit: South African Government’s Twitter page

A South African company is dumping the sludgy byproduct of mining into a historical diamond pit after the tailings dam that had stored the waste partially collapsed, killing one and leaving scores injured.


The government agency overseeing cultural preservation said on Thursday it approved plans to fill the historic Jagersfontein diamond mining pit with waste from a second compartment of the tailings dam in order to prevent a secondary breach after one compartment of the dam failed.

Public documents show Jagersfontein Developments, the company reprocessing old tailings around the disused pit to recover diamonds, has lodged five applications over the past decade with the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) seeking permission to store liquid mine waste that is a byproduct of that reprocessing in the pit rather than the dam.

The latest request was made on Aug. 17, just four weeks before the tailings dam disaster.

An earlier decision to move the waste into the pit could have relieved pressure on the tailings dam which burst on Sunday morning, unleashing a flood of gray sludge that swept away houses and cars in Jagersfontein, a small town in South Africa’s Free State province.

But the pit, the oldest and biggest hand-dug diamond mine in the world, is classed as a historical site and filling it up requires approval by SAHRA.

The Department of Water and Sanitation authorised the “immediate” pumping of slime from the second compartment of the tailings dam into the pit on Monday, the day after the dam burst, prompting SAHRA to approve the backfilling on Thursday.

“As the town of Jagersfontein is in a state of disaster because of the collapsed tailings dam (…) no further assessment of the impact to heritage resources are required,” SAHRA said, adding it had no objections to the plan submitted on Aug. 17.

Jagersfontein Developments first applied to backfill the historical pit in September 2012, and SAHRA granted it permission in June 2013, but the Jagersfontein Community Trust appealed the decision and the company withdrew its application in January 2014.

SAHRA said the subsequent applications made by Jagersfontein Developments in 2018, 2019 and 2020 were incomplete.

Fortune seekers drawn by South Africa’s diamond rush started digging at Jagersfontein in 1870. By 1907 the pit was bigger even than the more famous “Big Hole” in Kimberley, and reached a depth of 250 metres (820 ft).

Since then it has changed hands multiple times.

De Beers, the diamond mining unit of Anglo American Plc, was the last company to mine Jagersfontein until 1971, selling the mine and surrounding dry tailings dumps in 2010 to Superkolong Consortium.

Dubai-based Stargems Group purchased the assets from the Luxembourg-based investment fund Reinet in April 2022. Reuters could not immediately establish when Reinet bought Jagersfontein from Superkolong, and Reinet did not respond to requests for comment.

Neither Stargems nor Jagersfontein Development, a Stargems subsidiary, replied to questions about their plans to backfill the pit.

Sunday’s disaster has raised questions about oversight of hundreds of tailings dams littered across South Africa.

In 2007 South Africa’s High Court ruled that the Jagersfontein tailings dumps do not fall under the purview of the mines ministry, meaning companies processing the dumps do not require a mining licence.

Visiting Jagersfontein on Tuesday, minerals and energy minister Gwede Mantashe criticised that ruling, saying it should be “revisited” so that the ministry can inspect tailings dams.

“A (tailings) dam, you can’t trust it, it can break anytime,” he said in a video posted on his Twitter account.

(By Nelson Banya and Helen Reid; Editing by Ernest Scheyder and Jonathan Oatis)

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/09/another-mine-dam-wall-collapses-in.html

Teck says Elkview outage to cost 1.5 million tonnes in coal production

Cecilia Jamasmie | 

Elkview is one of Teck’s main steelmaking coal operations.

 (Image courtesy of Teck Resources.)

Canada’s largest diversified miner Teck Resources (TSX: TCK.A, TCK.B) (NYSE: TCK) said on Wednesday it expects to lose coal production of about 1.5 million tonnes due to a structural failure at its Elkview coal mine in British Columbia.


The Elkview steelmaking coal mine will remain halted for one to two months, Teck noted, while repairs to the plant feed conveyor belt take place.

When also factoring in the impact of recent labour action at Westshore Terminals, Canada’s biggest export coal terminal, Teck’s third quarter steelmaking coal sales are now expected to be between 5.5 – 5.9 million tonnes, compared to the previously announced 5.8 – 6.2 million tonnes range.

Unionized workers at Westshore Terminals, located in the Metro Vancouver area, walked out of the job over the weekend causing a complete halt of operations.

The port, with a capacity to handle 33 million tonnes of coal exports per year, takes production from British Columbia and Alberta, as well as the Powder River basin and Montana to international markets, mainly in the Asia-Pacific area.

The Vancouver-based miner said Elkview would reschedule planned plant maintenance to take advantage of plant downtime and mine operations would focus on pre-stripping during the outage.

Teck, which is also the world’s second-biggest exporter of steelmaking coal, had to halt production at Elkview in 2018 for almost two months. At the time, it lost about 200,000 tonnes in coal output.

Elkview Operations set a new production record in 2021, the first full year of operations since its plant expansion to a capacity of 9 million tonnes per annum.

Teck projects that proven and probable reserves at Elkview are enough to support mining for a further 30 years.

Researchers working on smart drone capable of preventing tailings dams failures

Staff Writer |

Researchers Guilherme Pereira and Ihsan Berk Tulu. 

(Image by Paige Nesbit, courtesy of WVU).

Engineers at West Virginia University are developing new technologies for coal waste storage facilities that will detect and prevent potential failures like leakage of hazardous materials into the environment.


After receiving almost half a million dollars in funding from the United States Department of Energy, the researchers plan to deliver an aerial robot-enabled inspection and monitoring system for active and abandoned coal ash and tailings or waste storage facilities.

The goal of the project is to find a way to detect leakages and failures at coal waste facilities before tailings and coal ash are released into the environment. Coal ash is considered one of the largest US supplies of industrial waste, containing metals such as lead, mercury, chromium, selenium, cadmium and arsenic, which never biodegrade and are toxic to humans.

“Failure of these structures has been shown to be catastrophic, causing massive mudslides that have devastated entire communities and created irreversible environmental damage,” Ihsan Berk Tulu, one of the engineers involved in the project, said. “Industry and federal and state governments spend great effort and time inspecting these structures, finding hazards that might lead to wastewater leakages or failures.”

AI + autonomous features

Tulu and his colleague Guilherme Pereira’s intelligent drone is expected to do its work autonomously and be able to create thermal and visual images and high-resolution, three-dimensional maps of the coal waste storage facilities, which will permit the detection of cracks, deformities and other hazards in the structures.

A second objective of the project is to create and equip the device with software that uses artificial intelligence-based algorithms to detect potential hazards. The software will collect and use thermal and visual images, as well as 3D point clouds, a technology that utilizes laser scanners to measure where light hits a particular surface or object, to generate highly accurate 3D models of the coal storage facilities. This will allow researchers to identify potential hazards quickly and efficiently without having to physically be at the inspection site.

“I’m originally from Minas Gerais state in Brazil, where catastrophic accidents with tailing dams happened recently, so the project has a special motivation for me,” Pereira said. “It is an opportunity to develop a technology that can save lives in the United States and in my country.”

In 2015, the Samarco mine tailings dam in Bento Rodrigues, Brazil collapsed, unleashing thousands of pounds of hazardous mud spill that killed 19 people. The mine waste eventually flowed more than 400 miles from its source to the Atlantic Ocean, contaminating water supplies along its route.

In the US, a tailings dam in Logan County, West Virginia, failed in 1972 following a heavy rainstorm, known as the Buffalo Creek Flood. This catastrophic collapse released 132 million gallons of wastewater into the surrounding community. The incident killed 125 people, injured 1,100 others and left 4,000 people without homes.

“We will train the next generation of engineers in the application of robotics technologies for our mining communities,” Tulu said. “A successful outcome from this project will be another technology tool for both West Virginia’s and the nation’s mining industries to improve the safety of the mines and the health of the nearby communities.”

ESG IS REAL
Australian mining firm IPOs lag on board gender balance
Bloomberg News | 

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

New Australian stock exchange listings are lagging the broader market in terms of board gender diversity, with just 12.2% of directorships at companies that went public in recent years held by women.


The issue was particularly acute for the materials industry. The sector, which accounted for nearly half of the 401 ASX Ltd. listings between 2019 and 2022, had only 5% of board seats held by women, the Australian Institute of Company Directors Gender Diversity Progress Report showed, citing data from OpenDirector.

That contrasts with more established companies, with 35.1% of board positions at Australia’s 200 largest listed companies held by women on Sept. 1, the report said.

There is “a tendency to increase the proportion of women on IPO boards in the years following their listing,” said Mark Rigotti, chief executive officer of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. “This seems to indicate either a late recognition or late effort to redress the imbalance.”

Companies need to consider board composition as early as possible in the listing process to optimize their skillset and diversity, said Nicola Wakefield Evans, chair of the 30% Club Australia, in the report. The 30% Club advocates for a minimum of 30% of board and C-suite roles to be held by women.

The mining industry, a key pillar of the nation’s economy, has come under intense scrutiny in recent years for its treatment of women, following an inquiry into cases of abuse of workers at companies including BHP Group Ltd. and Rio Tinto Group.

(By Adam Haigh)

Mexico values its Sonora lithium deposits at $600bn

Reuters 

Sonora lithium project in Mexico. Credit: Bacanora

A potentially vast lithium deposit in Mexico’s northern Sonora state could be worth as much as 12 trillion Mexican pesos ($602 billion), according to a recent finance ministry report, or over a third of the country’s projected economic output this year.


Mexico hopes its reserves of the key battery component will help it benefit from a global shift toward electric vehicle production that has turbo-charged demand, but experts are skeptical it will be able to quickly mobilize its industry.

Lithium prices have soared to surpass $70,000 per tonne this year.

While the ultra-light white metal is typically extracted from rock or brine deposits, lithium in Sonora is mostly trapped in clay soils, from which it has not yet been mined on a commercial scale.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has urged the private sector to work with the new state miner, saying the size of the investment needed means the government needs partners.

But analysts argue that companies are more likely to focus near-term investments in Chile or Argentina’s sprawling salt flats, where industries are more established and policies more market-friendly.

The massive projected lithium demand should, however, eventually draw interest to Mexico, they added.

“We have a product which can define what will happen with the world’s energy,” Bolivia’s Mexico ambassador Jose Crespo said in a statement published on Thursday.

Mexican newspaper La Jornada reported the government’s lithium valuation earlier on Thursday.

Though Mexico does not currently produce the metal, the finance ministry estimated the Sonora reserves could add some 0.3 percentage points to potential GDP in the medium-term.

($1 = 19.9400 Mexican pesos)

(By Sarah Morland; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Sam Holmes)

LG Energy inks cobalt, lithium supply deals with three Canadian miners
Reuters 

Credit: Avalon Advanced Materials.

South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solution said on Friday it has signed agreements on lithium and cobalt sourcing with three Canadian mining firms in a bid to expand its footprint in North America.


The Tesla supplier said in a statement the agreements were part of an effort to expand mid- to long-term supply contracts with companies that mine and process key battery materials in North America.

The US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed into law by US President Joe Biden in August, requires a percentage of critical minerals used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries come from the United States or an American free-trade partner.

LG said the three Canadian mining firms, Electra, Avalon and Snowlake, will supply LG with 7,000 tonnes of cobalt sulfate for three years from 2023, 55,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide for five years from 2025, and 200,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide for 10 years, respectively.

(By Joyce Lee; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

World’s biggest EV battery maker considers third plant in Europe

Bloomberg News 

Credit: CATL

The world’s biggest maker of electric-vehicle batteries, China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., is considering a third factory in Europe, the company’s president in the region said.


“We are thinking about this, but currently there is no clear decision or activity,” Matthias Zentgraf told Bloomberg News in an interview, saying internal discussions are already underway.

The Ningde, Fujian-based company last month announced plans to build a second European EV battery plant in Hungary, investing 7.3 billion euros ($7.2 billion) in partnership with Mercedes-Benz Group AG. The facility has a planned output of 100 gigawatt hours and will also supply Volkswagen AG, BMW and Stellantis NV. CATL expects it to be ready within five years.

“We will not build a third plant if there is no prospect for the demand volume,” Zentgraf said in a video call from the IAA Transportation conference in Hanover, Germany.

CATL has maintained a lead over rivals, including the world’s second-biggest cell producer LG Energy Solution Ltd. The company rebounded from its sharpest-ever drop in quarterly earnings at the start of 2022, with first-half net income rising 82% from a year earlier and revenue jumping 156%.

CATL has established several production bases in China and subsidiaries in the US, Japan and Europe. It is spending 27 billion yuan ($3.8 billion) on two battery projects in China’s Shandong and Fujian provinces. Zentgraf declined to comment on whether CATL would supply batteries to Tesla Inc.’s new factory in Berlin.

The battery maker has also been looking at sites in Mexico and the US to supply Tesla Inc., Ford Motor Co. and others, though that process has been delayed in part due to political tensions between China and the US, Bloomberg reported in August.

European energy crisis

CATL is due to start producing batteries at its first European plant, in the central German city of Erfurt, later this year. One challenge is the continent’s energy crisis and rising gas prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. More than half of Germany’s gas imports came from Russia before the war.

“We are affected with the shortage of natural gas, which is very important for the cell production process because we need a lot of energy,” Zentgraf said. Gas accounts for about half of the German plant’s energy needs.

“We are working on substitutions for this intensively,” said Zentgraf, who joined CATL in 2015. “We already have a very, very promising idea to replace natural gas to buy renewables.”

Contingency plans will enable the plant to stay operational through winter if gas supplies fall short or prices are too high, he said.

Zentgraf called for the EU to offer more flexible state aid to help localize and expand the EV-battery supply chain and complement billions of dollars of investment from battery makers.

“Concentrate that subsidy money into building up the supply chain for battery businesses overall,” he said.

(By Danny Lee)

General Motors invests in Canadian lithium-ion battery recycler

Cecilia Jamasmie | 

GM is launching at least 20 new all-electric vehicles by 2023. 

(Image courtesy of General Motors.)

General Motors (NYSE: GM) is boosting efforts to secure lithium supply, a crucial ingredient for electric vehicle (EV) batteries, by investing in Canadian battery recycling company Lithion Recycling Inc.


The move, which financial details were not disclosed, creates a partnership between the world’s second largest automaker and the Québec-based company to pursue a circular battery ecosystem using Lithion’s technology.

The companies said that third-party lifecycle analysis show that Lithion’s technology has a recovery rate of over 95%. As it uses green energy, the company’s technology and operations will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 75% and water usage by over 90% compared to mining battery materials, they said.

Unfazed by the slowing global economy, buyers of key components in the powering of EVs are stepping up efforts to lock in supplies.

GM is aggressively scaling battery cell and EV production in North America to reach its target of more than one million units of annual capacity by 2025. The automaker also aims to eliminate tailpipe emissions from all its new light-duty vehicles by 2035.

“We are building a supply chain and recycling strategy that can grow with us,” Jeff Morrison, GM vice president, global purchasing and supply chain said in the statement.

In August, Ultium Cells, GM’s joint venture with LG Energy Solution, opened its first US. battery cell plant, with two additional plants under construction.

A fourth planned battery cell plant will bring GM’s projected total US battery capacity to 160 GWh.

Covered

GM says the binding agreements it has in place guarantee that all its battery raw material need will be met, allowing it to reach annual planned of 2 million battery-powered cars a year by 2025. That’s when GM will be ramping up production of about 30 electric models globally.

As the company moves forward, it will work to increasingly localize its battery materials supply chain to North America, it said.

Lithion will launch its first commercial recycling operations in 2023. The opening of this facility, with a capacity of 7,500 tonnes per year of lithium-ion batteries, will be followed in 2025 by the launch of Lithion’s first hydrometallurgical plant.

IMPERIALIST ALLIANCE
US gathers resource-rich nations to push minerals security pact

Bloomberg News | 

The Mineral Security Partnership (MSP) includes Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, ROK, Sweden, US and the European Commission. Credit: Official Twitter account of the Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment

The Biden administration plans to use a gathering of resource-rich nations to spur new investment as part of its bid to shift the supply chain for rare-earths minerals away from China.


The Minerals Security Partnership between the US, EU, Japan and other wealthy nations is holding a ministerial meeting Thursday at the United Nations General Assembly with nations that possess minerals such as lithium, manganese and cobalt.


The developing nations taking part include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, the Philippines, Tanzania and Zambia. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to chair the meeting

The initiative, launched in June, is designed to funnel investment toward developing countries with mining projects that adhere to stricter environmental, social and governance standards.

“We created this to deal with a supply chain vulnerability that we’ve known has existed a long time,” Under Secretary of State Jose Fernandez said in an interview in New York. “But the pandemic has taught us that these vulnerabilities need to be addressed and minimized. And what we’re hoping to do is to galvanize investment, financing and other agreements.”

The critical mineral supply chain remains almost totally dominated by China, which controls most of the market for processing and refining minerals such as cobalt, lithium and other rare earths.

“It’s about providing options,” Fernandez said, when asked whether the partnership was a strategic initiative to counter Beijing. “If we’re successful, the Chinese will also gain as well, and that will be to the benefit of producing countries.”

The minerals initiative may also get a boost from recent legislative efforts in Washington. Fernandez referred to a recent trip to lithium-rich Mexico last week, where he told local officials that “now’s the time to partner” on projects that might to benefit from tax credits under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.

“There is momentum — the funding that is provided in the IRA is substantial,” Fernandez said. “It should allow us to to promote responsible critical mineral production in a way that supports ESG goals.”

In the coming months, the US intends to continue meeting with mineral-rich nations and identify some of the first mining projects to benefit from the minerals security pact.

(By Iain Marlow)

More than half of US car sales will be electric by 2030
Bloomberg News |

GM Ultium battery. Credit: General Motors

Just over half of passenger cars sold in the US will be electric vehicles by 2030, according to a report from BloombergNEF, thanks in part to consumer incentives included in the $374 billion in new climate spending enacted by President Joe Biden.


Those incentives, among them a point-of-sale tax credit of up to $7,500 for a new EV purchase, are likely to boost the pace of adoption, BloombergNEF analysts found in the report. Prior to passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August, projections for EV sales by 2030 2030 came in at 43% of the US market. With the climate-spending measure in place, that estimate was revised upwards to 52%.

The latest projection from BloombergNEF puts the US on track to hit a key target set by Biden last year, for half of all cars sold in the US to be battery-electric, plug-in hybrid or fuel cell-powered by the end of the decade.

In 2021, electric vehicles accounted for less than 5% of sales in the US, below the global rate of nearly 9% and well below the adoption rate in countries like China, where plug-ins currently account for roughly 24% of new car sales. Norway became the first country to see electric overtake combustion engine vehicle sales last year. Under the revised forecast from BloombergNEF, the US will surpass the global average in 2026 instead of 2028.

The three automakers with the most domestic battery production coming online in the near term—Tesla, GM, and Ford—are set to benefit most from the new law, according to the report. At the insistence of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, the IRA restricts the full $7,500 credit to vehicles assembled in North America, with additional phased-in thresholds for manufacturing batteries in North America.

In the new report, analysts noted that these requirements “will take time to adjust to,” particularly as automakers contend with critical minerals and battery rules. But those challenges are expected to lessen over time, a shift that could also bring more electric cars into an affordable price range.

“In the next year or so, there shouldn’t be too much of a difference [in sales],” said BloombergNEF electric car analyst Corey Cantor. “Later in the decade, we expect not only the EV tax credit but the battery production tax credit to drive a steeper decline in EV costs.”

(By Ira Boudway, with assistance from Kyle Stock)

THE BIG FIVE OH

China has enough coal reserves to last another five decades

Bloomberg News 

Main north-south railway line, Xinzheng, Henan, China. (Image by Gary Todd, Wikimedia Commons)

China has enough coal for the next five decades and sufficient oil to last at least 18 years at current rates of production, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources.


The latest annual tally of reserves released on Wednesday shows an endowment of fossil fuels that stretches well beyond China’s 2030 deadline to peak its carbon emissions. In the case of coal, the worst fuel for global heating, there’s enough in the ground to take China past even its 2060 ambition to achieve carbon neutrality.


China consumes over 4 billion tons of coal a year, most of it domestically mined with imports making up less than a tenth of its needs. In 2021 its reserves stood at around 208 billion tons, 28% more than the prior year’s level, while the outlay on exploration rose 10% to 1.3 billion yuan ($184 million), according to the ministry.

For oil, reserves edged up 2.8% to 3.7 billion tons, which would theoretically be enough to get the nation’s drillers through most of the next two decades, assuming stable output of about 200 million tons a year. Natural gas reserves were a touch higher at 6,339 billion cubic meters, enough for the next three decades.

However, China still relies on imports for most of its oil and much of its gas. Investment in exploration over the year rose 13% to 80 billion yuan, with breakthroughs made in finding new reserves in Sichuan, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, as well as the Bohai Bay, the report said.