Gcm Resources Share Discussion Threads

[behuge] 16/5/2019 11:34

Bangladesh and China needs coal

[jayviperjayviper] 16/5/2019 11:16

The silence is deafening ha ha

[behuge] 16/5/2019 11:05

RNS will be massive

[jayviperjayviper] 16/5/2019 10:23

Poor Bees is on the back foot now bless ha ha nobody backing it up it seems.


I feel a suspension coming my way again soon ha ha

[jayviperjayviper] 16/5/2019 10:19

I have been suspended a few times but I play the game now.

No swearing. No name calling (apart from Princess) and like in martial arts they push you pull and vice versa. Use their own energy (or in this case stupid comments) against themselves.

I've been in a relationship my whole entire life so I know how to be passive aggressive to win an argument against a women.

[legionnaire2] 15/5/2019 22:18

Huge uplift for GCM soon..

[behuge] 15/5/2019 20:11

RNS one day closer.

[behuge] 15/5/2019 17:37

The World’s Last Coal Plant Will Soon Be Built
More generators were closed last year than approved, for possibly the first time since the 19th century.
By David Fickling
15 mai 2019 à 04:01 UTC+2
A tipping point for this fossil fuel?
A tipping point for this fossil fuel? Photographer: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg
David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering commodities, as well as industrial and consumer companies. He has been a reporter for Bloomberg News, Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and the Guardian.
Read more opinion
Follow @davidfickling on Twitter
COMMENTS

Share
Tweet
Post
Email
In this article
XW1
Generic 1st 'XW' Future
85.45USD/MT-0.70-0.81%
3470094Z
BLOOMBERGNEF
Private Company
CL1
WTI Crude
62.10USD/bbl.+0.32+0.52%
Fossil-fuel advocates have a favorite rejoinder to those who predict a global shift to renewable energy: Coal has never been more popular.

It’s a decent argument because it happens to be true. While coal-fired power has declined by nearly a quarter in Europe and almost 40 percent in North America over the past decade, the change has been overwhelmed by a 63 percent increase in Asia.

Burning Up
Coal-fired generation is in decline everywhere -- except in Asia, where it's been booming

Source: BP Statistical Review
Note: TWh=terawatt-hours, equivalent to one billion kilowatt-hours.
That makes ambitions to prevent more than 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming seem all but out of reach. Making matters worse, there’s a further 236 gigawatts of plants under construction worldwide, according to the Global Coal Plant Tracker, an online database operated by climate activist groups. Put together, that’s enough to add another quarter to the current fleet of turbines.

The tide may finally be turning, though. Final investment decisions, or FIDs, for coal plants have fallen by about three-quarters over the past three years, from about 88GW over the course of 2015 to around 22GW in 2018, according to the International Energy Agency’s latest world investment report released this week.

The full significance of that figure isn’t apparent until you compare it to the pace at which plants are shutting down. Some 30GW of generators were retired last year, so more capacity was closed in 2018 than was approved – almost certainly the first time this has happened in a generation, and possibly the first time since the 19th century. When FIDs drop to zero, the 140-year era of coal plant construction will finally be over. 1

Help the Aged
Annual final investment decisions for coal generation projects have fallen below the pace of closures

Source: Global Coal Plant Tracker; International Energy Agency; Bloomberg Opinion estimates
Note: FID figures are visual estimates taken from the IEA's charts. The IEA didn't provide raw data before publication time.
It will take a few years for that to work its way through the system, since plants typically take about four years to build after reaching FID. Still, the peak in global plant capacity could be just months away.

“This is a sneak preview of where we’ll be in three to four years time,” said Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a research group that favors energy transition. “If closures stay where they are, we’re at peak by 2021.”

Of course, there’s still 236GW of projects under construction – but announced retirement plans already offset almost all of that:

Giving With One Hand, Taking With the Other
Announced coal retirement plans in the U.S., Europe and India alone are enough to offset all plants currently under construction

Source: Global Coal Plant Tracker; Energy Information Administration; Beyond Coal; India Central Electricity Authority, Bloomberg Opinion estimates
Note: Retirement plans are: Europe, 100GW; U.S., 86 GW; India, 48GW.
Even China – which accounts for more than half of the construction pipeline, with 129GW underway – is slowing down. It shutters between 5GW and 10GW of coal every year, and added just 4GW of net capacity last year, according to BloombergNEF.

Peak coal capacity doesn’t definitively mean peak demand. Plant utilization is at low levels in most of the world’s major coal markets because over-investment and inroads being made by renewables and gas are forcing generators to switch off furnaces for longer and longer stretches. The U.K., for instance, just went without coal-fired electricity for a week. In countries like India and China where over-investment is the main problem and electricity consumption is still increasing, it’s just possible that overall coal-fired generation could rise as energy demand climbs to align with the supply that’s already built.

Still, that’s not the way that financial decisions are pointing. The top line of the IEA report is that energy investment in general is falling short – renewables spending, for instance, needs to double by 2025 to get the world on track below 2 degrees of warming. But the deeper story is of an energy industry whose bean counters seem to be betting on a sharp decline in fossil fuel use, even as policymakers track a less ambitious path.

Annual FIDs for coal-fired power are already below where the IEA expects them to be seven years from now under its New Policies Scenario, which envisages countries making somewhat more ambitious emissions cuts than are currently in place. That suggests spending is likely to wind up closer to its Sustainable Development Scenario or SDS, an alternative model that would target global temperature increases below 2 degrees. 2

Follow the Money
Oil and gas companies are signing off on new project developments as if they think the IEA's most radical major decarbonization scenario is their central case

Source: IEA, Bloomberg estimates
Note: Figures are visual estimates from IEA charts; the IEA didn't provide raw data before publication time. The SDS lines represent annual average rates for the 2018-2025 period estimated by the IEA to hit its Sustainable Development Scenario. Boe=barrels of oil equivalent.
Indeed, to judge by the slow pace of recent investments in gas-fired power and new oil and gas production, it looks like energy companies are treating the SDS as their central case. That would be an extraordinary outcome, suggesting that a mere continuation of current trends in fossil-fuel investment would be enough to hit the IEA’s most ambitious major climate target.

It’s always possible that a fresh investment boom is waiting in the wings to reverse that pattern. The resources industry is notoriously cyclical, and has spent years returning cash to shareholders to atone for the mountains of capital wasted during its last splurge. Still, at some point you have to ask if the low rate of current investment is a temporary cyclical low, or the harbinger of structural decline.

The end of coal – and oil, and gas – isn’t quite here yet. But the energy industry appears to be betting that it’s coming soon.

It's possible that some new plants could be signed off even beyond then to replace further retirements and in niche cases. Without a new investment boom, though, it will no longer be an important technology to supply new grid demand.
For a better handle on the issues with these scenarios and how they're used, read this piece by my colleague Liam Denning.

[behuge] 15/5/2019 17:25

Buying almost every week since months. Don’t care about 2,3 or 10 pence. This will be a multi pound share. Just a question of time. I’m not in a hurry !

[888icb] 15/5/2019 17:07

The point is we have been stuck in this narrow range for over 3 months up and down a couple of pence each day. It is not important if you are invested because you believe this is going to get the green light because then we are talking £'s and a few pence is immaterial.

[behuge] 15/5/2019 16:41

The Deeper she goes, the more i buy. GCM gonna BEHUGE