[HN Gopher] No bids for over 70% of Indian coal mines up for auc... ___________________________________________________________________ No bids for over 70% of Indian coal mines up for auction Author : DocFeind Score : 90 points Date : 2021-07-10 20:59 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.reuters.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com) | arcticbull wrote: | Have we considered sending in the bitcoin mining P/E firms? An | opportunity for vertical integration. | reader_mode wrote: | Bitcoin is way to volatile for that kind of a commitment - it's | short term pump & dump I would say. | kolinko wrote: | Bitcoin miners already purchuased at least one coal plant. | seriousquestion wrote: | Bitcoin is 12 years old, and supposedly 60% is held by long | term investors. | | https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/bitcoin-market-data- | exc... | ipaddr wrote: | And only 2 million coins are left. | lostlogin wrote: | I'm pleasantly surprised this hasn't happened after reading | this recently: https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-miners-are- | giving-new-l... | hedora wrote: | Since they need two bids to proceed, does anyone else want to go | in with me, bid a dollar, and immediately abandon the mines? | rrmm wrote: | The mines probably come with liabilities of all sorts. | hh3k0 wrote: | That does sound like fun but I'm sure there's a minimum bid. | Hippocrates wrote: | It might work if posted on /r/wallstreetbets | Permit wrote: | I am not familiar with the environmental laws in India but in | Canada you are often on the hook for closing down and cleaning | up a site once it is abandoned (that is, you can't just walk | away from it). My understanding is this can cost hundreds of | thousands of dollars. | | I recently met someone who was leasing oil wells (edit: natural | gas, not oil) that lacked sufficient pressure to pump gas into | a pipeline. The wells still had enough pressure that you could | use them as an immediate fuel source so they were hooking up a | few cryptocurrency mining rigs to a generator there. Apparently | the companies who own the wells like this because they don't | immediately have to declare the wells abandoned and pay the | cleanup fees. | gruez wrote: | >so they were hooking up a few cryptocurrency mining rigs to | a generator there | | The generators can run off crude oil directly? | erik_seaberg wrote: | It does burn so a | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil_engine works okay, | it's just not as clean or efficient as an engine with tight | temperature/pressure tolerances for very specific fractions | of the fuel. | Animats wrote: | Probably a natural gas well, not an oil well. Few oil wells | generate oil under pressure. (Those "gusher" were found and | drained decades ago, most of them more than a century ago. | See "Spindletop") | Permit wrote: | You're right, I was mistaken in the original post. I | should have said natural gas, not oil. | hef19898 wrote: | I saw the same with old chemical plants in Germany. Some | companies preferred to keep an office active, just to keep | the site open. Closing it would have meant clean up costs in | 10s of millions. | bredren wrote: | In the US there is regulated process, soil testing and | cleanup costs in decommissioning underground gasoline storage | containers. Average cleanup is $130k. This does affect | property values and can take a while. | | https://www.epa.gov/ust/frequent-questions-about- | underground... | cmeacham98 wrote: | Seeing the responses to this, maybe governments should | require people opening these types of places to put down a | deposit for the cost of the cleanup in advance. | youeseh wrote: | Since the government of India is setting targets for net coal | export, you'll likely have to meet output quotas. So, good | luck! :D | rossdavidh wrote: | Ok, how about does anybody have a need for a big hole in the | ground? Swimming pool? Storage? Carbon sequestration, maybe even? | lr4444lr wrote: | Question for those who know better: isn't the Indian coal | industry rife with mafia activity, or is that all in the past? | idlecool wrote: | My dad worked in coal India for around 3 decades, and I grew up | in one of the townships. I have never heard of Mafia | involvement. However, I have seen coal being stolen from moving | trains that transport coal. They are mostly locals who probably | sell it or use it themselves, but it doesn't account to much | AFAIK. | manishsharan wrote: | I really find it hard to believe that you have never heard of | Mafia involvement in Cola mines of Bihar even though your dad | worked in Coal India. However just because you did not hear | of it does not mean it doesn't exist. | | There is a while section about this on Wikipedia. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_Raj | | And this : https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&u | rl=http://... | | Also this : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suryadeo_Singh | | There are also a bunch of Bollywood movies with Coal Mafia as | a background. "Gunday", though not about coal Mafia, is | pretty entertaining. | AnotherGoodName wrote: | Coal usage peaked ~2013. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_coal | | Just in the past two weeks: | | Germany closing even new coal plants - | https://reneweconomy.com.au/german-coal-plant-closes-after-j... | | Philipines will not build new coal plants due to economics. They | will instead invest in grid scale storage and renewables - | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-10/biggest-p... | | It's mostly economics. When other generation and storage systems | drop by orders of magnitude in price in just 2 decades it throws | the old equations out. There's no economic reason to build a coal | plant today. | | https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2018/12/03/plu... | tpmx wrote: | > Germany closing even new coal plants | | Please don't greenwash Germany's horrible energy strategy | failure after they prematurely closed nuclear plants because of | Fukushima-based populism. They brought a new coal 1.1 GW coal | power plant online last year that they expect to run until at | least 2038. (Datteln 4: | https://www.reuters.com/article/deutschland-klima-uniper- | idD...) | melling wrote: | 38% of the electricity globally is coal. We've got quite a long | way to go. | whimsicalism wrote: | Because of sunk costs (not in the fallacy sense). Doesn't | mean it makes sense to build a new one. | | Agreed we have a long way to go :) | melling wrote: | We are building lots of coal plants globally. | | https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut- | emissi... | jes5199 wrote: | I don't understand why China is building so many coal | plants - for several years it's been reported that they | run them way, way under capacity. | jdhn wrote: | Jobs program, perhaps? | newsclues wrote: | Don't we use coal for two main things? Energy and steel? | | Do we have a replacement for coal in the steel industry? | pengaru wrote: | Cement production is another big one. | kleton wrote: | And cement | gus_massa wrote: | We had a very big steel mill here in Argentina that had | it's own forest to grow eucalyptus, and make coal with them | and use that in the steel production. From | https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aceros_Zapla_S.A. | | translation> _It had 15,000 ha of forest with 30 million | eucalyptus trees to extract the coal necessary in the | process, for which the town of "Centro Forestal" was | build._ | ph0rque wrote: | > Do we have a replacement for coal in the steel industry? | | Still in R&D admittedly, but micronuclear should do the job | well. | QuercusMax wrote: | how does micronuclear replace coal for producing carbon | steels? | ph0rque wrote: | Here's an example research article: https://www.sciencedi | rect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605... | 6nf wrote: | Ah I think you're misunderstanding the question about the | steel. Steel contains quite a bit of carbon (the element | carbon) dissolved in the iron, on the order of 1% of the | steel bulk is elemental carbon. You need to get that | carbon from somewhere and coal is good source of carbon. | | No research is going to replace the carbon in steel with | something clean, your article is about the energy used in | steel production and not the elemental carbon going into | the steel itself. | ph0rque wrote: | I see, thanks for the clarification. Yes, I was thinking | of coal solely as a source of energy (heat, specifically) | to melt steel. | Gibbon1 wrote: | I read an old paper from the 60's on electrowinning iron | from a sulfate solution. They claimed around 4.5kwh/kg. | Read a more recent paper (2019) reporting on same process | with modern separators[1] got energy requirements down to | 3.5kwh/kg. | | 3.5 kwh/kg is probably 20 cents worth of electricity. | | [1] Separators are used to isolate the anode and cathode in | electrolytic cells in order to suppress side reactions. | Modern separators allow specific ions to pass while | blocking others. | tialaramex wrote: | You need carbon to make steel, but it doesn't necessarily | have to be from coal. So we definitely _could_ replace | coal, but that may be very expensive at today 's scale. | Even if we can use trees rather than coal, we are avoiding | the release of carbon which was previously locked away | underground. | | Also, coal we dig up is much more suitable for one or the | other purpose. If you mine thermal coal, the steel plant | doesn't want it, they want metallurgical coal. If your | country has a steel plant, and a thermal coal mine, you | will export thermal coal from the mine and import | metallurgical coal to run the steel plant. Well, if nobody | buys your thermal coal, the coal mine shuts, even if you | still have a steel plant. | germinalphrase wrote: | I don't know if he is right, but Bill Gates has been saying | that we should basically accept that certain kinds of steel | will never be made with a net zero process. We need steel | though, so we will have to offset those carbon costs. | bradleyjg wrote: | The linked article says: | | _The Department of Energy in late 2020 declared a moratorium | on endorsing new coal-fired power plants as the Southeast Asian | nation seeks to shift to a more flexible power supply and | reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030._ | | You don't need a moratorium on something that makes no economic | sense. This is a decision that takes into account externalities | (and that's great!) | toomuchtodo wrote: | > You don't need a moratorium on something that makes no | economic sense. | | Yes, you do. Some will make decisions that are uneconomic | because captive rate payers have no choice (this is prevalent | with coal in the US MISO and PJM ISO grids) but to pay, and | those making them are doing so to support coal even while in | its death throes. About 160 cities are locked into the | prairie state coal plant in southern Illinois (one of the | largest coal plants east of the Mississippi) because of bonds | they issued and debt they've taken on they can't afford to | accelerate payback on to close the plant early. | | https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2021/6/4/22517456/prai. | .. | | TLDR You have to kill coal with extreme prejudice, not just | hope economic sanity is enough, because the evidence has | demonstrated it isn't. | bradleyjg wrote: | > Some will make decisions that are uneconomic because | captive rate payers have no choice | | If that's the case then you have bigger problems. Rather | than applying bandages on top of a broken system you should | figure out how to align incentives. | toomuchtodo wrote: | People who profit today and won't be here tomorrow cannot | have their prioritizes aligned with mitigating climate | change. If I were to want to go with some hyperbole, I'd | call them apathetic antagonists. | | The system is broken _because you can't align the | incentives_. | bradleyjg wrote: | A) that's not true, you can design proper incentive | structures | | and | | B) I thought the claim was that coal is uneconomic | regardless of environmental considerations | [deleted] | AnotherGoodName wrote: | I'll point out that the 2013 peak predates many of these | environmental moratoriums to phase out coal. | | I'm cynical and jaded so i feel that the only reason we're | finally getting some traction on the environmental side is | that the poor economics of coal made the environmental battle | not worth fighting anymore. Effectively the coal lobby is | disintegrating at this point. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | The bidding process and ownership obligations are probably just | convoluted enough to dissuade the small players. You see this | sort of thing all the time when all manner of goods, equipment or | land goes to public auction. | | A small player would jump at the chance to buy a mine for cheap | if they were reasonably confident they could actually walk out of | the deal owning a mine for cheap. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-07-10 23:00 UTC)