IN recent months we have seen the world progressively fall out of love with coal, as various governments around the globe, concerned with the challenge of climate change and carbon emissions, have sought to move away from coal as a fuel to generate electricity, accentuating the collapse in the world coal price, with major investment funds divesting from coal assets, and the share price of coal companies collapsing by some 80-90 per cent on global stock markets.
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The latest nail of significance in the coal coffin was the, somewhat surprising, Valentine's Day, bi-partisan, agreement by the British political leaders, Cameron, Clegg and Miliband to ban raw unabated coal in power stations.
This is in the context of what is now a global push to reach a global agreement for emissions reductions at the Paris meeting in December.
While it is possible to accept that the UK Government can manage the fall out in its coal industry, and in the broader UK community, it is difficult to understand how the coal industry, and the broader community, in our country could cope with such a commitment.
Coal is very important to Australia. Currently, we depend on coal for both power and exports, and the industry is a significant employer. In rough numbers, coal is upwards of 20 per cent of our total exports, about 3.5 per cent of our national product, produces about three quarters of our power generating capacity, and employs about 50,000 directly, and another 135,000 indirectly.
This sort of global trend, if effectively forced on Australia, could therefore have quite devastating consequences.
So, the challenge is to find a "lifeline" for the coal industry in our country that, ironically, may be a development of international significance.
In this regard, I have recently come across, and am now supporting, a company, and a technology, that will "refine" coal, to remove the nasties, so that it can be burned with diminished environmental impact.
It can also be used to produce an alternative to diesel, at about 30 per cent of the cost, that would revolutionise the transport industry, rail, road and sea, over and above its benefits in power generation.
Neither oil nor gas are worth much in their "raw" state - their use, and value, comes from refining them. So too with coal!
Our PM, Tony Abbott, made a statement late last year that, "Coal is good for humanity". The point is that it can be if we clean it up, and develop technologies to genuinely exploit its true potential.
Our economy is languishing. The resources boom is over. Where next do we look for the growth sectors that will at least sustain, if not add to, our standard of living?
We have a genuine, global, competitive edge in "brain-based", education/skill/ technology intensive industries. A value-added coal industry is one of the very best examples of how that can be the case.
The Abbott Government is now also in reverse in terms of its response to climate change, alarmingly off the pace in terms of global trends.
Support for a coal refining industry, which probably can be developed at no cost to its Budget, should be a "No Brainer"!
