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Opinion: Adam Bandt and the Greens need coal as much as everyone else
An abridged version of this opinion piece, first appeared in
.
NSW Minerals Council CEO, Stephen Galilee
The Greens continue to demonstrate why most people view them as operating outside the reality of everyday Australian life.
Last week Greens MP Adam Bandt compared coal to tobacco and asbestos. It was a cheap shot designed to grab some easy media attention over the Easter break. It was also a deep insult to the thousands of coal miners and those living in coal mining communities across NSW.
It also ignores the reality of just how essential coal is to our daily lives.
It’s fashionable in some quarters to demonise coal as an old-fashioned industry that has no place in modern times. It’s an attempt to portray coal as something we can do without if we choose. This is a false and very misleading choice because coal remains essential to us all.
Coal is not an optional extra. Coal is not like the sunroof on a car, something we can choose not to have if we don’t want it. Coal is a necessary input for modern society. Nothing else is able to do what coal does for us all every day. No other commodity is as durable, efficient and necessary for our standard of living. Despite what Adam Bandt thinks, we need coal. We can’t live without it. And neither can he.
First and foremost, coal is used to provide energy. Here in NSW coal provides over 80 per cent of all our electricity. Homes, hospitals, schools and businesses across Sydney and in towns across NSW rely on coal for heating, cooling, lighting and everything else that plugs into a power point. Globally, coal is also the biggest source of reliable electricity and is expected to be so for decades to come.
Sure, there are other energy sources, including renewables, and these should be welcomed because we need as many other sources of energy as possible. However, no other energy source is able to efficiently meet the basic power needs of our state or country like coal-fired power.
However, coal is not just needed for generating electricity. Coal is also needed as part of the process to make steel, and is also used to make cement. So coal provides electricity, steel and cement, three essential building blocks of modern economies. Without coal, our world would literally fall down around us.
Adam Bandt might not like coal but perhaps he should consider how much he relies upon it every day. The alarm clock that wakes him in the morning is powered by coal-fired electricity. The chauffeur-driven car that drives him around each day contains over half of tonne of steel that would not exist without coal.
The buildings he enters each day are mostly made using steel and cement – coal again.
When he gets to his office and turns on his computer, his lights and his heating, he uses coal. When he visits a wind farm he also endorses coal, as without coal the steel for the turbines cannot be made. When he tweets his latest anti-coal messages he again uses electricity, delivered by coal. Consider the poor of the world, those who Adam Bandt no doubt claims to care for.
There are hundreds of millions of people in China and India in particular without access to electricity. Their notion of ‘clean energy’ is somewhat different to Bandt’s. They cook indoors using whatever they can, often with animal dung. No heating, no lighting, no future. Delivering them out of energy poverty is the best thing we can do for them. Only coal-fired electricity offers them this possibility.
Bandt would apparently prefer to see the poverty-stricken of the world freeze in darkness than gain access to the coal-fired power that would improve their living standards and their life expectancy.
Coal has been mined in NSW for over 200 years, and continues to underpin the strength of key regions like the Hunter and the Illawarra, employing around 22,000 people directly and many more in supplier and support businesses, including over 3000 businesses in Sydney. Coal is also our state’s single most valuable export commodity.
Here in NSW we have abundant coal reserves of high quality, a world-class mining workforce, and a long history of innovative mining practices. Our coal industry provides us with a strong economic advantage and a commodity in demand the world over.
Instead of demonising coal, it’s time we recognised and celebrated our coal-driven good fortune. so here’s to NSW coal, and also to the hard-working coal miners of NSW who deliver for the rest of us every day.