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World's Largest Private Coal Company Files For Bankruptcy (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Peabody Energy Corp filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection on Wednesday after a sharp drop in coal prices left it unable to service debt of $10.1 billion, much of it incurred for an expansion into Australia. As demand for metallurgical coal fell, particularly in China, Peabody's financial woes intensified. The company took a $700 million write-down on its Australian metallurgical coal assets last year. At home, the U.S. shale boom of the past few years made natural gas competitive with thermal coal, and the Obama administration's environmental regulations raised operational costs. Mr. Peabody's coal train might not be hauling away any more of paradise. Peabody, the world's biggest private-sector coal producer, said it expected its mines to continue to operate as usual and said its Australian assets were excluded from the bankruptcy. "This process enables us to strengthen liquidity and reduce debt, build upon the significant operational achievements we've made in recent years and lay the foundation for long-term stability and success in the future," Peabody Chief Executive Officer Glenn Kellow said in a statement.
Most of these are going in as chap 11. IOW, they are simply dropping their debt and then being allowed to go back to mining coal. Yet, the real issue is that the coal burning plants are closing left, right, and sideways. Last year, Coal accounted for around 30% of America's electricity. And at this rate of dropping, coal will account for about 15-20% in another 2 years (they expect about 1/2 of the plants to close over the next 2 years).
So, unless these companies are jumping on other mining ventures, OR they are developing uses for coal, then these will be bankrupt in another 3-5 years. So, society is being stuck with these loses over and over.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
At home, the U.S. shale boom of the past few years made natural gas competitive with thermal coal, and the Obama administration's environmental regulations raised operational costs.
At the end of the day, this is really the problem.
Natural gas has grown in volume while going down in price over the past few years. Since electricity in the wire doesn't care about the source, as soon as gas becomes cheaper than coal, it is really hard to keep the coal plants running.
Combine this with lots of environmental regulations that make it hard to turn a profit, and things like this are to be expected.
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The above being said, some people will say they WANT coal to cost more, because it is dirty and because they want a switch to wind and solar. While that is a lofty goal, it has to be balanced against the increased price of electric generation for your average citizen and against what might really replace coal.
If coal is replaced by natural gas, that is "cleaner", in the sense that per KWh of power, you do emit less CO2, it isn't exactly a switch to green power.
If you run the coal plants out of business too quickly, you simply end up with a shortage of electricity, leading to brownouts and blackouts. Wind and solar are being installed, but it will take many years before they approach the volume required to replace the 39% of electricity the US generated from coal in 2015.
How did they do it? Sounds like they invested heavily in Australia and neglected everything else. How did they keep it exempt from the bankruptcy?
In other words how can I buy a new home and get to keep it after a bankruptcy?
Well perhaps all the assets are auctioned and you can buy a cheap coal mine or two, then you have more than enough coal for your stoves.
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away........ Read more: John Prine - Paradise Lyrics | MetroLyrics
Literally and figuratively.
Coal is a very cheap hydrocarbon. Very easy and cheap to extract. So it's the most ideal resource for processing new plastics from. Once energy production drops from coal expect plastics to be used even more as they will be cheaper. Imagine plastic effused concrete.
We might actually be heading into the true plastics era. You ain't seen nothing yet.
Who in this century had the misplaced wisdom to invest $10B in this coal company? How is it possible to be so blind to the changing tide in the energy world? Whatever . . . I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell them if you can find these investors for me.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Since someone will bring it up, might as well be me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Worth a look, the percentage of electricity production in the US by renewables is indeed at an all time high, but not as much as you'd think.
In 1998, it was 11.06% of all electricity produced. In 2015 it was 13.44% of all electricity produced.
Yes, an increase, but it has been mostly Wind and Solar picking up for the loss of hydro. Hydro is down 28% since 1998, while Wind and Solar are up massively.
Overall, the US produced 150 billion KWh more electricity in 2015 than in 1998. Nice, but in real terms, nothing to jump up and down about.
CO2 levels in the air are past 400 PPM, in order to get them to stop climbing and actually FALL, will require efforts far beyond all this in a timeframe that is highly unlikely to happen.
http://400.350.org/
The safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 350 parts per million. The only way to get there is to immediately transition the global economy away from fossil fuels and into into renewable energy, energy efficiency, and sustainable farming practices.
The primary problem with this is that what would be required to do it may well start WWIII and lead to massive revolts worldwide. The math just isn't there.
In many ways, the time to change direction was 30 years ago. The ship has sailed, so we now must prepare for the future that is so clearly coming.
http://www.globalwarming.org/2...
But as Newsweekreporter Sharon Begley points out, just to limit atmospheric concentrations to 450 ppm, nations would have to build 10,000 new nuclear power plantsâ"one every other day from now until 2050â"plus a mind boggling 1 million solar roof top panels per day from now until 2050. Even then, 450 ppm is attainable only if global energy efficiency improves by a whopping 500%, population grows only to 9 billion (instead of 10 billion or 11 billion), and global GDP grows at an anemic (near recession) rate of 1.6% per year.
The problem with people like the 350.org group is that they encourage action without saying how MUCH of that action would be required.
What would it take to lower CO2 concentrations to 350 ppm? According to Begleyâ(TM)s source, Cal Tech chemist Nathan Lewis, global CO2 emissions would have to drop to zero by 2050.
Absent revolutionary changes in energy production, distribution, conversion, and storageâ"Nobel-caliber breakthroughs that nobody can plan or predictâ"lowering CO2 emissions to 350 ppm is impossible without draconian cutbacks in population, economic output, or both. Whether they realize it or not, the Climate 350 Club is asking us to go back to the caves.
In other words, there is ZERO chance of this happening...
So we need to prepare for a world of 500 PPM CO2, and frankly should prepare for 600 PPM, since 500 PPM will sail right on by and I doubt we'll stop before 600 PPM either...
again, zero chance. Oil and Nat gas are MUCH MUCH cheaper to obtain and better as a feed stock. Coal is far more expensive then both oil/nat gas.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
http://www.newsweek.com/begley...
The irony is that the above was written in 2009, when CO2 levels were 386 PPM, now they have passed 400 PPM and show no signs of stopping.
Two viewpoints:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which assesses the causes, magnitude and impacts of global warming, said in 2007 that "currently available" technologies and those on the cusp of commercialization can bring enough zero-carbon energy online to avoid catastrophic climate change. And I regularly get reports from renewable-energy and environmental groups arguing that off-the-shelf technologies, fully deployed, can get us there.
And on the other side:
In the opposite corner is the Department of Energy, which in December concluded that we need breakthroughs in physics and chemistry that are "beyond our present reach" to, for instance, triple the efficiency of solar panels; DOE secretary Steven Chu has said we need Nobel caliber breakthroughs.
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In short:
That is also the view of energy chemist Nate Lewis of the California Institute of Technology. "It's not true that all the technologies are available and we just need the political will to deploy them," he says. "My concern, and that of most scientists working on energy, is that we are not anywhere close to where we need to be. We are too focused on cutting emissions 20 percent by 2020â"but you can always shave 20 percent off" through, say, efficiency and conservation. By focusing on easy, near-term cuts, we may miss the boat on what's needed by 2050, when CO2 emissions will have to be 80 percent below today's to keep atmospheric levels no higher than 450 parts per million.
Worth noting is that 450 PPM is 100 PPM higher than the Club 350 people want to keep it at and say is the "safe level".
So is that possible? Here is a 12 step program from someone who says it could be done. And perhaps in a fantasy world, it could. Most of this list is completely silly stuff.
http://sustainabilityadvantage...
1. Mandate net zero energy (NZE) residential and commercial buildings. - Well that sounds nice for new construction, but what do you plan to do with existing buildings? People don't tear down and rebuild stuff every 10 years. This will also raise the price of new buildings making it harder to afford them.
2. Design walkable, bikeable communities - That works for future communities, but not the ones already built. It also really only works for places that have expensive land or are boxed in by mother nature to small areas. In places that have lots of cheap land, it simply makes no economic sense.
3. Stabilize the population - Talk about a political minefield. Go see if the Pope is going to start supporting birth control.
4. Put a price on carbon - You can do this, but in the short term it will just push a billion people into poverty. Do it enough to actually matter and you may end up with riots. You ALSO have to do it world wide, or it doesn't matter.
5. Capture CO2 - This is an easy suggestion to give, I'd like to see the worldwide pricetag for paying for it. Technically possible things are not always affordable.
6. Electrify transportation - Even if you banned gas car production tomorrow, at current car production rates it would take nearly 15 years to replace the gas cars in the world with EVs, and that assumes that people will have the money for them, have a place to charge them, and that power plants can somehow produce enough power for a billion cars cleanly. Since you can't actually ban gas cars tomorrow, you might phase this in over a decade or two, at best, but in reality you're looking at multiple decades before even half the car fleet is EV.
7. Create a national, smart elect
Coal had it's day and natural gas is currently the top dog but renewable energy sources have drastically increased lately and will eventually take the cake.
I would tend to agree with you...
The problem is the use of the word "eventually". We are now past 400 PPM CO2. 500 PPM will come and go without issue, the more interesting question is 600 PPM.
Can we stop before we hit that? I have my doubts. Part of the problem is the oceans are stuffed full of CO2 and there is a limit to what they can absorb. We keep putting more CO2 out each year.
http://www.economist.com/blogs...
Even if we hold CO2 to current levels, that doesn't actually help. Lets say we cut them by 20%! Yea us! Except that also doesn't actually help.
So what do we have to do? What would it take to drop CO2 levels in the air to 350 PPM?
We'd have to cut 90% of CO2 worldwide.
Even if we all wanted to, I don't think that would be possible and keep anything remotely like our current standard of living.
Oil and natural gas won't be cheap forever...
The smart play is to develop factories that can take all three as a feedstock, so that you don't care which one is on top in any given year...
I follow a fair bit of environmental news sources ... but this is only 'news for nerds' in that it's a case of people sitting at home complaining about things that they have little chance of directly affecting.
The sign that this should be off-topic here is that it doesn't have an appropriate category -- it got shoved into 'hardware'. (I could maybe see it under science (climate change) or technology (issues w/ price competition in energy production) ... but how the hell is this 'hardware'?).
Can we get this back to being a tech website again? Keep the articles on topic, and kill the 'Entertainment' category? ... unless of course, it's Star Wars ... or maybe comic book related ... okay, you can keep 'Entertainment', unless we see some post about some reality TV show with non-tech people in it or one of the dozen or so singing shows.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
TOTALLY agree with you about that being the smart thing. I doubt it will happen. :)
However, if we quit burning oil/nat gas, then our usage will be below 20% of what it is today. IOW, oil/nat gas will remain cheap for many decades, if not centuries. Still good to have alternatives.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Enjoy the radioactive fly ash. Who needs to visit Fukushima when you can reenact it in your own home?!
Energy is not the only coal user. If you want to make steel out of iron ore, you will need a lot of coal.
Historical tidbit: Peabody was an industrial powerhouse back in the days of steam. They were the coal equivalent of Standard Oil, and they became *very* wealthy.
C|N>K
Oh so you say tax payers pay for the cleaning up? Great how the public hand funds this. What a wonderful job the politicians did.
I have a hard time fitting plastic into effused concrete. Concrete is poured all the time. Though I think you meant infused, in which case I'd rather not as I can imagine it would result in death of significant numbers of people. Plastic infused concrete would likely offer no benefits and significant problems. Without some special plastics the results would be plastic that wasn't bonded into the concrete where the strength of concrete is from the bonding that forms. Now if you could construct it like fiberglass where it was stranded and had sufficient angular surfaces that the concrete could hold onto the plastic you might have something but I doubt it. Fiberglass reinforced concrete trades compressive strength for flexibility and additional tensile strength. Plastic infused concrete would likely weaken compressive strength and tensile strength while providing no actual improvement. Honestly if there was any benefit to such a combination it would already exist because plastic is already dirt cheap. Some plastics are already significantly cheaper per volume than aggregate.
Even if coal was free it wouldn't significantly lower the cost of plastics because the additional processing steps would more than compensate for the cost of the base materials. Most plastic is made from very light hydrocarbons (gasoline and lighter). To use coal for plastic production you would need to refine the coal and frack off lighter hydrocarbons, this would be extremely energy and process intensive. Probably on the order of the Fischer-Tropsch process, which is wickedly inefficient, and then throw on a bunch of sub-processes and you'd even still need a hydrogen source like natural gas. We won't be making plastic from coal until every drop of oil is used up.
we could make enough nuclear plants to power everything, including machines to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. the question is when will our representatives admit that the situation is dire.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Ok. How about the Wall Street Journal? Falling Chinese Coal Consumption and Output Undermine Global Market
Both coal production and consumption peaked in 2013 and has dropped continuously, falling a further 3.7% in the first 11 months of 2015 compared to the same period the year before. Both coal production and consumption peaked in 2013 and has dropped continuously, falling a further 3.7% in the first 11 months of 2015 compared to the same period the year before.
The central government has curbed construction of new coal fired plants with national regulators ordering in April 2016 a halt to construction in 13 provinces and delays for already approved projects in a further 15 provinces.[5] This is in line with a moratorium issued by the National Energy Agency in 2015 banning new coal mines in China for a period of three years and closure of thousands of small coal mines. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So coal is bad because of CO2.
Nuclear is bad because NIMBY
Hydro is bad because environment
Natural Gas is bad because of frakking
Oil is bad because of pipeline/dependency on OPEC
Wind is bad because it could kill birds/NIMBY
Solar is bad because it could mess with desert environments
If we keep going this route, we won't have to worry about reading Slashdot. There will be no power to run the servers!
They've turned into coaldemort.
Nullius in verba
the question is when will our representatives admit that the situation is dire.
When they aren't running for reelection. :)
The problem is that the solutions involve pain, and people don't like pain.
You won't change anything until the pain of change is less than the pain of staying the course. Sadly, it will be FAR too late by that point.
The reason they died is because there's so much coal available from other sources that they were priced out of the market.
If anything, OTHER countries caused that problem.
Coal is a vital ingredient for converting iron into steel. Are there any alternatives for this process?
We might actually be heading into the true plastics era. You ain't seen nothing yet.
I fear you may be right. Burning fossil fuel is bad enough as it is, but at least most of the waste products are going to disappear from the environment relatively quickly, and CO2 is not very poisonous, despite the fact that it causes climate change. Plastics on the other hand consists of entirely new molecules which biology has no response to, so it get broken down very slowly and mostly mechanically, and we are only now beginning to realise that the presence of microscopic fragments of plastinc in the food webs is likely to be a problem - perhaps a big one. And plastics leach other artificial chemicals that have their own, harmful effects; some mimic hormones, for example. It would be somewhat ironic, wouldn't it, if our enthusiasm for this brilliant wonder material ends up more of less sterilising us.
For all that, I'm not against plastics - what I am worried about is the fact that we always seem to rush head first into whatever seems like a good idea at the time, ignoring all calls for caution because that might get in the way of making a quick profit. Why is it that we never learn? Plastics could be - already is, in fact - a hugely valuable material, cheap, strong, light weight, resistant to chemicals etc etc, but we really need to learn to think before we just release new, unknown substances into the environment. Perhaps we actually need something similar to the restrictions on pharmaceuticals - rigorous testing that proves that a new chemical meets certain, strict guidelines for harmfulness, utility and safe mechanisms for their final disposal.
Yeah, you are correct about the oil/nat gas remaining cheap for decades. After global warming reduces industry and population, demand will drop and so will the price.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There is a longer-term risk to plastics we don't usually consider (because it's *very* long term ?) but it is worth thinking about maybe. The last time there was such an abundance of a molecule that nothing could break down it was lignin. Lignin being the key molecule that allowed plants to form wood and grow into trees. For quite some time there was nothing that could break down lignin - the era is what we now call the carboniferous. The presence of that molecule in abundance had interesting effects on nature. Firstly - a lot of carbon did not get broken down into CO2 when trees died, so it ended up being trapped and forming the fossil fuels we're now burning (interesting how the new unbreakable molecule is made from the results of the old one). In the meantime those trees produced oxygen but because they didn't decompose nothing balanced that out. The earth's oxygen content jumped to 40% - the highest it has been in it's entire history.
In that environment a lot of things that can't grow very big due to inefficient lungs grew gigantic. There was a dragonfly with a 1m wingspan, the largest known arachnid of all time - which had a jaw almost 90cm long (we have no complete fossils but it's estimated to have been well over 3m from head to tail - nothing like that could live today).
And when eventually things DID evolve that could break down lignin... in a very short time, all those creatures went extinct.
Imagine if the results of something evolving that can break down plastics - is actually worse for us than the plastic dumping was... it's entirely possible and the simple fact is that if we keep putting plastic everywhere - things WILL evolve that can eat it. Sooner or later.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I can't see how that could occur, unless your only friend is Romania and you fail to invade The Caucasus and Persia.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Ha ha ha.
The Administration may have failed to bring America's gasoline prices to the European levels. But the promise to bankrupt the coal-industry is coming fulfilled.
Maybe, he sincerely believes, coal is a poison and should go away. But it is far more likely, that he — or some of his more pragmatic allies in the party — are simply scheming to buy the companies for pennies on the dollar and then politically rehabilitate the fuel with the help of politicians grateful for their donations. And even ask taxpayers for assistance. Seriously, wouldn't Department of Energy be happy to issue grants and low-interest loans to something with "Green Coal" or "Clear Coal" on the first page of their brochure?
As the old adage goes:
The little scheme involves immense PROFIT to the well-connected cronies, who snatch the struggling businesses between the 2nd and the 3rd step.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It's been 50 years, isn't it time to stop the political shenanigans and do something the environment now? Handing billions of dollars to democrat campaign contributors while ignoring the stuff that could actually save the planet is getting tiresome.
> 3. Numbers don't matter ...
Liberals normally seem to THINK like that, but they rarely say it so clearly. "So what if it doesn't work, it makes me feel good to pretend".
We're not talking about "it would be hard" or "or would cost a little more". It's impossible, and therefore a huge waste of precious time. So far you guys have wasted 50 years chasing solar-electric, which is one of the most ineffective energy sources ever proposed, next to "pyramid power".
Now if you go down to the hardware store and get an 8" plastic pipe for $12, you can put it outside, connect it to your water line, and have hot water. That works; it works quite well. Since it works, and you can do it yourself for $12, it doesn't involve handing a few billion dollars to Clinton and Gore's campaigning contributors, so they tell you to do that. They tell you to ignore what works and instead give billions to their buddies. You go right ahead and do that, while power continues to come from 80% fossil fuels because you're too busy handing money to political donors rather than using the carbon-free energy technologies that actually work.
Someone needs to start a company that extracts carbon from CO2 in the air, and then buries it back in coal mines where it came from.
The shrinking market for coal is directly related to cheap natural gas from fracking. When these reserves are depleted it will revert to coal.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Coal is going down. It's over barring some new technology that can eliminate the nasty side effects of mining or burning coal.
A black pipe in full sun will get quite hot even if the temperature outside is 50F or so. At lower temps, it at least REDUCES the amount of natural gas needed to finish heating the water.
Even if the air is 40F, the ground 50F, and the solar water 80F, that reduces the energy that the natural gas water heater uses.
I'm glad to see that many well-known environmentalists are now acknowledging that the way to significantly reduce fossil fuel use, with technologies that actually exist, is to use wind power during windy time to augment the nuclear baseline.
... things WILL evolve that can eat it. Sooner or later.
As a matter of fact, I read an article not long ago about just such a micro organism, which can digest some types of plastic, very slowly.
Not to mention the total subsidy of all industry for lower wages on the backs of social programs. A few wealthy make more profit from a cheaper workforce where the entire tax base pays for the social programs required for all those people that can't live on the wages the receive. Pension and cleanup obligations are a drop in the bucket compared to this systemic problem.
Walmart is the poster child of this issue for not only an example of the above but apparently profiting even more from accepting the most food stamps as well. Probably expressed as a Win-Win in the exec boardroom...
Fiberglass is a plastic epoxy resin reinforcing a glass fiber.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
We are not heading into a nightmarish "true plastics era". We are progressing to a semi-intelligent diamondoid materials era.
You won't change anything until the pain of change is less than the pain of staying the course. Sadly, it will be FAR too late by that point.
you're wrong about that because they are running out of options and when they are out of options they will do the right thing.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
One of the mainstay's of evolution is that as soon as a resource exist, the stage is set for something to show up that eats it. It can take a very long time, but once the stage is set the event becomes inevitable. Once something started laying eggs - the evolution of egg-eaters was guaranteed.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
you're wrong about that because they are running out of options and when they are out of options they will do the right thing.
People are not going to accept their power bills being doubled without seeing a clear and obvious reason why. Even then they might complain...
"Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources.”
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
What new regulations has Obama created that caused the coal industry to collapse?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Electric furnaces are expensive to run, at least any place that gets cold. Electricity is expensive, and they aren't very efficient. On the upside they are simple, low maintenance, and run clean (at the point where the heat is generated). But there's a reason why almost everyone here uses natural gas or propane for heat.
I would have probably gotten a heat pump myself if natural gas/propane wasn't feasible.
No ide how that got "insightful"
Coal is not a hydrocarbon, coal is carbon
No way to make any plastics from it unless you convert it with some hydrogen source into "hydrocarbons".
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
:-) Any evidence of that? You politicians only talk about the "right thing" after retirement, and/or a book deal is coming. They never do while in office unless they are pushed into it. Are you up to the challenge of voting for the "right person"?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”