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By Jo NovaThe trend is spreading. Coal, the stranded asset of a bygone era, is hot property again everywhere. All it took was a few weeks of an energy crisis, and decades of brainwashing against coal is evaporating. On Friday, I wrote about how countries like Japan, Korea, and India were redirecting themselves towards coal power. Now Bloomberg, Fortune, and others are reporting this trend. As I write, Italy is considering delaying the closure of all its coal plants til 2038, Germany is reopening old coal plants. Thailand is restarting two coal plants it only shut down last year. Bangladesh is going to run its coal plants at max capacity all summer. And the Ecoworriers are starting to fear this crisis will trigger a more permanent shift back to coal — which it absolutely will — not because of ‘sunk costs’ or any of the other excuses the greenies tell themselves, but because the oil crisis will break the sacred exorcism spell cast upon coal. Governments have been shocked at how vulnerable they are without fossil fuel energy. People might be ordering EVs, but governments want fossil fuels. Activists should be panicking — the whole anti-coal program was based on petty namecalling, teenage girls, and costumes — not hard numbers. It could fall over at any moment, and they will not be able to put it back together. Italy may keep coal plants open til 2038 now: Coal phase-out postponed: power plants remain in operation until 2038A new lease of life for Italian coal-fired power plants. To address the energy crisis, in the event of an emergency, fossil fuels will be allowed to continue to be used until 2038 , thirteen years beyond the deadline set by the National Energy and Climate Plan, which called for a shutdown by December 2025. The extension was included in the billing decree with amendments presented by the League and Azione parties. The measure also introduces a crackdown on telemarketing and measures to support less polluting transportation. Minister for European Affairs and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Tommaso Foti, defends the decision: “All energy sources, at least in the immediate future, must be used to their fullest extent.” League MPs in the Productive Activities Committee call the extension “fair and responsible” during a time of international energy crisis. German government not prepared to gamble on going without coal: Energy crisis may force Germany to keep coal-fired power plants aliveChancellor Friedrich Merz questioned Germany’s plans to abandon coal as a source of power. “We may need to keep our coal plants online for longer,” he said at an event organized by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Frankfurt. “I am not ready to gamble with the core of our energy supply just because we agreed on some deadlines years ago,” Merz said on Friday. Coal use in Europe could be up 20%: Iran War’s Gas Supply Shock Pushes Top Consumers Back to CoalBy Rajesh Kumar Singh, Will Wade, and Eva Brendel, Bloomberg Power analysts with the London Stock Exchange Group estimate European countries could generate around 20% more electricity from coal this summer than last, if the European gas benchmark averages about 50 euros per megawatt-hour. That figure currently stands at around 54 euros. “This is a bigger disruption than the Russian war,” said Tony Knutson, global head of thermal coal markets at consultancy Wood Mackenzie Ltd, given the impact on a larger number of countries. Those without enough gas will be forced to pull the coal lever, he added. “I don’t think they have a choice.” Fortune news lists all the Asian countries reopening coal, and talks about how the effects of the crisis are starting to bite on the details of life like driving and hot showers.
Coal is back and nuclear is next: The Iran war is rewiring Asia’s energy futureBy Nicolas Gordon, Fortune Asian governments are temporarily pivoting to coal… For Asia, which buys more than 80% of the crude and LNG that flows through the narrow waterway, the consequences have been swift: severe fuel shortages, export bans, and government budgets stretched to the breaking point. South Korea urged households to take shorter showers, charge devices during off-peak hours and shift usage of high-energy appliances like washing machines to weekends. Samsung, meanwhile, barred employees from driving their car to work if the last digit of their license plate matches the last digit of the current date. Southeast Asian governments are rolling out similar restrictions. Thailand introduced a four-day workweek for civil servants, and ordered higher office air-conditioning temperatures to curb demand. Vietnam’s airlines are suspending some domestic routes as the country braces for jet fuel shortages. Thailand’s government is restarting two coal plants that it decommissioned last year. Climate activists fear the comeback of coal: The risk is that once a coal plant is brought back online, the sunk costs and political economy of energy pricing make it difficult to shut down again. “There’s a danger of a long-term carbon lock-in once countries decide to reverse plans to retire aging coal-fired fleets,” warns Sharon Seah, coordinator of the Climate Change in Southeast Asia program at ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute. The long term ‘lock in’ of revived coal plants is what happens when reality hits the fantasy. March 31st, 2026 | Tags: Coal, Fossil Fuel, Germany, Italy | Category: Europe, Fossil Fuels, Global Warming |  Print This Post | |  … by Jo Nova The Iranian oil and gas crisis is causing a sudden realignment of national energy policy with reality. Spare a thought for the poor Ecoworriers who are hoping the Straits of
Instead, just like the Ukraine War, the middle east crisis reminds everyone of the importance of fossil fuels. After thirty years of international pogrom against coal — it only takes a few weeks of an energy crisis to explode propaganda that was six feet deep. Japan, Korea, India, Europe, The Phillipines, (and that’s just in the last few days) have all announced they will be using more coal to make up for shortages in gas from the Middle East. And even if the oil crisis ended tomorrow, things are not going back they way they were. The shock of discovering how vulnerable your nation is will leave a mark. National Energy Security is back on the agenda. Japan to Allow More Coal-fired Power to Cope With Energy ShockBy Shoko Oda, Bloomberg
Japan will allow more use of coal-fired power plants in an effort to boost security of supply to cope with the energy shock from the war in the Middle East.
The country will let less-efficient coal facilities take part in capacity market auctions in the fiscal year starting in April…
Japan is joining other nations that have shifted course to use the dirtiest fossil fuel more in the wake of of the war. The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the shutdown at the world’s largest liquefied natural gas plant in Qatar have left Asian nations that are heavily reliant on Middle Eastern energy vulnerable.
Increasing coal-fired power will also help insulate Japan from uncertainty over oil imports…
Only last November Korea vowed to phase out coal. This week, the word is that they are going to stop capping coal plants and allow them to operate more freely. Europe will be burning more coal too…Europe Boosts Coal-Fired Power as Gas Prices Rally on Iran WarEurope is burning more coal as the surge in natural gas prices forces utilities to switch to cheaper fuels to keep the lights on.
German coal plants have increased their share of generation by about 2% so far this month compared with February, even as sunnier and windier conditions boost renewables, according to Entso-E data. At the same time, gas-fired power output in Europe’s biggest market has dropped by more than a third.
Europe’s energy strategy, which relies heavily on gas as a bridge between coal and renewables. It also raises the prospect that governments may prioritize affordability and energy security over emissions cuts.
And it’s coal for The Phillippines:Philippines declares ‘national energy emergency’ and boosts coal power as Iran war grinds onThe Philippines president, Ferdinand Marcos, has declared a state of “national energy emergency” as a result of the Middle East war, which his administration said posed “an imminent danger of a critically low energy supply”. The state of emergency, which will initially last for a year, was declared just hours after the country’s energy secretary said the Philippines planned to boost the output of its coal-fired power plants to keep electricity costs down as the war wreaks havoc with gas shipments. The energy secretary, Sharon Garin, told reporters earlier on Tuesday that with the cost of liquefied natural gas (LNG) soaring, the country would “temporarily” be forced to lean even more heavily on coal. And the most populous nation on Earth just decided to delay plans to phase out coal…. India Pushes Back Flexible Coal Power Plan Amid Cost Uncertainty
ndia is delaying a plan to have coal-fired power plants operate at reduced rates when solar generation is at its highest, due to uncertainties about how to compensate coal plants for running at minimum levels, according to minutes from government meetings reviewed by Reuters.
All around the world governments are discussing energy security. They won’t forget a shock… Photo: Coal plant by Dave Johnson  Photo by Petar Milošević By Jo Nova Coal, it turns out, is an infinite chemical wellspring, being converted into everything from plastic, to diesel, jet fuel, gas, methanol and fertilizer. There is no way, just no chance, that China will leave this bounty locked underground. And why are we? The idea of converting coal to liquid fuel sounds like an expensive exotic chemical reaction that is barely used. If people have even heard of it, it’s mainly because the Nazi’s were so desperate for liquid fuel to power their tanks and armored cars, they converted coal in a large plant that became a wartime target in World War II. It produced 92% of Germany’s air fuel, and 50% of its petroleum. Who knew, those Messerschmidts were coal powered? Later South Africa used it in the 1980s in response to an oil embargo, and they still do. Quietly China has developed a giant coal-to-liquids industry to reduce its strategic vulnerability to an oil shock or a wartime embargo, and the volume is astounding. Accurate numbers are hard to obtain, but the IEA estimates that every year China is converting 380 million tons of coal into fuel, ammonia and fertilizer. To put that in perspective, Australia is now the second largest exporter of coal in the world, and China is converting more than we export through coal-to-liquids and coal-to-chemicals. This is also more than the USA uses. China’s coal production is 4,800 million tons each year. Something like 8% of that converted to something else, like petrol, gas, plastic water bottles, synthetic clothes, and fertilizer for food crops. And they also make diesel. China’s Coal Industry Has a Big, Dirty Secretby Javier Blas, Bloomberg, 2nd June 2025 Largely unnoticed, the size of this obscure corner of the Chinese coal industry has reached gargantuan proportions: It consumes about 380 million metric tons of coal as a feedstock for chemical and liquid fuel production, according to the International Energy Agency. To understand its size better, it helps to think about the segment as if it were a country. As such, it would rank as the world’s third-largest consumer, only behind the rest of the Chinese coal sector and India, but ahead of the US, Japan and other top coal-consuming nations like Indonesia and Turkey. People may think that Coal-to-liquids is only something worth doing if the price of oil is high, but that all changes if you care about energy security. And China clearly does. The modern part of that processing was largely experimental in the early 2000s. Commercial-scale projects mushroomed in the 2010s, and, after a brief hiatus, more have emerged in recent years, particularly in the Chinese heartland, where the bulk of the country’s coal fields are located far from coastal cities. By now, its scale — which dwarfs all other countries’ coal-to-chemicals production — and growth is surprising even veteran industry observers. Look at some modernized plants and coal is nowhere to be seen: It’s mined underground almost directly beneath the chemical facilities, carried by conveyor into the furnaces where it’s gasified and transformed. From there, it goes into your plastic water bottle or synthetic fabric clothes. And this vast silent industry is set to double. Such is the demand, reports are that Chinese use of coal-to-liquids is rapidly growing. Any plans of China giving up coal is pure fantasy. Chinese alchemy: Cheap fuel powers coal-to-gas and chemicals boomBy Sam Li and Colleen Howe, Reuters, 4 Sept, 2025 The fastest-growing sector in the industry is expected to be coal-to-gas.
The capacity under construction is around four times what was built over the past decade, according to Reuters’ analysis of figures from Agora Energy China, the China National Coal Association and Guosen Securities.
That would more than double annual capacity to 19.5 billion cubic metres (bcm), equal to roughly a fifth of China’s LNG imports last year.
Even though China is using less coal for electricity production, it is not using less coal overall. That extra coal is being fed into other energy, industry and agriculture: China’s Renewable Boom Masks a Quiet Coal-to-Liquids Expansion
China and South Africa are the only countries operating CTL and CTC at an industrial scale. It is important to note that the largest part of this demand goes into the CTC [Coal to Chemicals] industry. China has effectively replaced gas as its main feedstock for ammonia and methanol production with raw coal, to the extent that roughly 80% of these chemicals’ output is now fed by coal. China’s largest CTL [Coal to Liquids] facility, the Shenhua Ningxia plant, commissioned in 2016, produces roughly 100,000 b/d of synthetic fuels from approximately 44,000 t/d of coal. By comparison, a conventional refinery would require a third of this amount, equivalent of 14,000 t/d of crude oil to produce a similar volume of refined products. At current prices, coal in Qinhuangdao trades at roughly $105–110 per tonne, while Brent crude equivalent costs about $525 per tonne (at $71/bbl). Even accounting for conversion costs, coal-based synthetic fuels can offer economic advantages, particularly in a volatile oil market. If we valued energy security, we could have been producing coal to liquids and fertilizer on a smaller scale that was able to be ramped up on short notice. It would be cheap insurance against billions of dollars in losses which threaten entire annual crop cycles, mining production, export income, or even existentially, food distribution, and defense. Asleep at the wheel in the Lucky Bubble Country. March 27th, 2026 | Tags: China, Coal, Coal-to-liquids | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | By Jo Nova Quietly while Australians were talking about Grace Tame or Britanny Higgins the levers of industrial power are shifting gear While Australia has a puritanical objection to nuclear power there are 437 operating reactors around the world producing 9% of global electricity. One day Australians might be as technologically advanced as Armenia and Bangladesh. We can only hope… For the last fifty years, the leaders of the world in nuclear power have been the US first and then France second, and by a long way, but China is about to change that global tally board. Currently operating nuclear plants
Click to enlarge (World Nuclear Association) Under ConstructionThere are 78 Reactors Under Construction which will add another 78,986 MWe, and nearly all of that is in one country.
Click to enlarge (World Nuclear Association) The tally board stands at 438 Operable Reactors with a capacity of 400,680 MWe producing 9% Share of Global n Electricity Generation and 2,667,383 GWh (2024). Why aren’t we talking about this?  Image by Zdenek Vadura from Pixabay By Jo Nova This study kills a few sacred cows at once: it pokes a hole in the idea that less red meat is always better, and that one diet is “the best” for everyone. Researchers in Sweden followed 2000 people for 15 years, and expected to find that the people with the high risk ApoE4 gene, ate more red meat they would suffer from an increase in dementia. Instead the study showed the opposite. People with the ApoE4 gene who had lower intakes of red meat, had “more than twice” the risk of Alzheimers. But the ApoE4 people with the highest consumption of meat had the same risk as people without the risky gene. There’s a dark possibility that all those years of Vegan Wokery pushing people to eat less red meat to “save the planet” may have come at the price of an increase in Alzheimers. ApoE4 is a very unusual variant, it’s both common and yet important — about 30% of the Swedish population have one or two copies of ApoE4, which puts them at significantly greater risk of Alzheimers. Even one copy of the variant increases the risk two or three fold and two copies increases the risk by 10 fold which is really rather bad. Among people with Alzheimers, about 70% have the ApoE4 gene. To be clear, eating more meat didn’t change the risks of people with the ApoE3 or E2 variants. And processed meat didn’t help anyone. This study suggests that people with the ApoE4 gene need more meat than others. It may be just that red meat is higher in B12, zinc, iron, B6, creatine, carnitine, choline, and taurine and it solves a nutrient deficiency? But the good news in this study is that people with ApoE4 might be able to reduce their risk with a nice steak or ten. High meat consumption linked to lower dementia risk in genetic risk groupNews from the Karolinska Institutet Older people with a genetic risk of Alzheimer’s disease did not experience the expected increase in cognitive decline and dementia risk if they consumed relatively large amounts of meat. At lower meat intake, the group with APOE 3/4 and 4/4 had more than twice the risk of dementia than people without these gene variants. However, the increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia in the risk groups was not seen in the fifth of participants who consumed the most meat. Their median consumption is estimated at approximately 870 grams of meat per week, standardised to a daily energy intake of 2,000 calories. ‘Those who ate more meat overall had significantly slower cognitive decline and a lower risk of dementia, but only if they had the APOE 3/4 or 4/4 gene variants,’ says Jakob Norgren. He continues: ‘There is a lack of dietary research into brain health, and our findings suggest that conventional dietary advice may be unfavourable to a genetically defined subgroup of the population. For those who are aware that they belong to this genetic risk group, the findings offer hope; the risk may be modifiable through lifestyle changes. ‘ Wow — Decreased mortality too?You might wonder if more red meat decreased dementia in high risk people but then increased heart attacks and cancer. But ApoE4 people eating the highest levels of meat were also more likely to live longer. That suggests there is something very real going on. The findings also extend beyond brain health. In a follow-up analysis, the researchers observed a significant reduction in all-cause-mortality in carriers of APOE 3/4 and 4/4 with higher consumption of unprocessed meat. What will the green zealots do when a third of the population argue that putting carbon taxes on cows, or making meat more expensive could increase their risk of dementia? Who wants to tell the vegans with ApoE4 what the future holds? Keep reading → March 24th, 2026 | Tags: Dementia, Diet, Meat | Category: Global Warming, Health | Print This Post | | Congratulations to Cory Bernardi in the SA election.Bernardi was always a skeptic… and brave enough to say so when others were afraid. Excellent news.
By Jo Nova Foreign readers may not be aware of the bunfight for petrol and especially diesel fuel in Australia. Three weeks in, and the energy and exporting giant of coal and gas is unraveling at the seams. Regional towns and some servo‘s are running out, farmers aren’t sure if they will be able to seed this year, and miners are starting to lay off staff. Three weeks. It could be something to do with forward planning.
While the rest of the world has 90 days stockpile, Australia imports 90% of its oil, and has about three weeks fuel left. Obviously, our great leaders looked at our remote, low density island with an economy based on heavy industry and said “who needs diesel”? David Archibald has spent 50 years around the oil industry and he has a plan“There are no impediments to Australia becoming completely autarkic in liquids fuel production, and also petrochemical precursors and LPG, and ammonium sulphate for fertiliser.” — David Archibald The method as described in The Solution To Our Fuel Crisis has three main parts:
It was not that long ago we produced three times as much diesel: It’s amazing what fifteen years of climate fog can do to an industry…  Graph from Scott Ashton David Archibald explains that climate change ideology killed off a perfectly good plant: “An unforced error” There used to be an oil refinery run by BP at Kwinana, but that was closed in 2021. It had a capacity of 140,000 barrels per day. It was running at a profit and didn’t need upgrading. At the time, BP was run by a bloke called Bernard Looney, who “became CEO in February 2020 and served until September 2023, during which time he spearheaded a strategic pivot toward renewable energy and set net-zero ambitions.” In effect, the Kwinana refinery was sacrificed on the altar of global warming. As a modern refinery with the ability to handle a range of crude types it would have a replacement cost approaching $6 billion. The WA and Federal Governments could have stopped the refinery’s closure but they both worship at the same altar of global warming. The nearest refinery is the Viva refinery in Geelong, 3,300 km to the east. … His story symbolizes the whole downfall of Australian energy policy. We believed the hype on climate change and stopped thinking of fossil fuels as the motor of civilization. We stopped paying attention. Our big states need a lot of diesel Queensland and WA use half the national tally of 33 billion liters of diesel.
David Archibald says: 1. Use the oil we already haveThe first thing to do to fix our fuel problem is to utilise the oil and condensate we are producing but not refining. Onshore and offshore, Western Australia produces 50,000 barrels of oil and 250,000 barrels of condensate per day. The condensate is a byproduct of gas production for the LNG plants 1,300 km north of Perth. There used to be an oil refinery run by BP at Kwinana but that was closed in 2021. It had a capacity of 140,000 barrels per day. It was running at a profit and didn’t need upgrading. At the time, BP was run by a bloke called Bernard Looney who “became CEO in February 2020 and served until September 2023, during which time he spearheaded a strategic pivot toward renewable energy and set net-zero ambitions.” In effect, the Kwinana refinery was sacrificed on the altar of global warming. As a modern refinery with the ability to handle a range of crude types it would have a replacement cost approaching $6 billion. The WA and Federal Governments could have stopped the refinery’s closure but they both worship at the same altar of global warming. 2. Open new oil fields: The next thing to do to secure Australia’s fuel security will be to develop the Pavo oilfield which is located 100km off Port Hedland. This is a 109 million barrel oilfeld discovered in 2022. The Pavo discovery was preceded by the Dorado discovery in 2018. This is a big field at 162 million barrels of oil (half of Australia’s annual consumption) with 748 BCF of gas…. initial production is still five years away at best. Australia needs the Pavo oilfield online tomorrow. Pavo is a national security issue now. Pavo is a simple, uncomplicated development. It is in 88 metres of water and has a low gas to oil ratio. 3 .Turn the excess, bountiful coal we have into liquid fuel that we can pour into tanks, trucks and tractors: The solution for the east coast is installing Bergius coal liquefaction plants. There is plenty of coal that is too low grade for export, either due to ash content or water content, which would be ideal because it is next to worthless. There was a Japanese research Bergius plant in the Latrobe Valley which operated up to 1991. Victorian brown coal has a high reactivity and thus a low residence time. This Japanese effort determined a price hurdle of US$40 per barrel for development in 1991 dollars (oil was US$24 per barrel at the time). That equates to US$95.20 in 2026 dollars which is less than the current Brent price of US$102 per barrel. To quote a line from the movie Aliens, the readouts are all in the green. There are no impediments to Australia becoming completely autarkic in liquids fuel production, and also petrochemical precursors and LPG, and ammonium sulphate for fertiliser. Well, no impediments apart from the current State and Federal Governments. But those can be overcome by the will of the People once the People have suffered enough to get organised. Archibald adds that Western Australia could use the Bergius coal process too: When the oil and gas fields run out, as they will, liquids production can switch to applying the Bergius liquefaction process to the lignites that exist in a belt from Salmon Gums, north of Ravensthorpe, wrapping around the Yilgarn Craton towards the South Australian border. A few details about converting coal to liquid fuel:Coal liquificationThe current diesel price in one of the better suburbs of Perth is $2.92 per litre which equates to $464 per barrel, which is US$325 per barrel. The future is coal liquefaction by the Bergius process. That involve a lot of stainless steel because the Bergius reaction takes place at 300˚C, 250 atmospheres of pressure with hydrogen. Hydrogen causes embrittlement of carbon steel above 200˚C and so stainless steel needs to be used. How it works is shown in this graphic from Bergius’ Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1931:
[The] addition of 5 kg of hydrogen to 100 kg of coal turns it from a low value solid into precious liquids. The hydrogen is made by steam reforming of part of the gas stream. Oil has a specific gravity close to 0.8 so 100 kg of coal converts to 81 kg of oil which has a volume of 100 litres. On that basis, one tonne of good quality coal will convert to 6.3 barrels of oil. Lignites, with a 40% water content, would produce 40% less. How much stainless steel? A length of stainless steel pipe 50 metres long, 900 mm in diameter and with a wall thickness of 10 mm will allow a one hour residence time to produce 5,000 barrels per day. Learn to weld stainless steel. Everyone needs to do their part. Read it all How to solve Australia’s fuel crisis. David Archibald is also the author of The Anticancer Garden in Australia. He has had over 50 years in and out of the oil industry. His first oil industry role was as a juggie on a seismic crew in the Channel Country of far western Queensland in 1974.
March 20th, 2026 | Tags: Archibald (David), Coal, Diesel | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | |
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