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Renewable Energy News

WEDNESDAY 20 JULY, 2011 |

Coal Cries Poor - Making $1 Million Per Employee

by Energy Matters

The coal industry has moaned about Australia's carbon tax increasing the cost of a tonne of coal by less than $2; while reportedly making a million dollars profit per employee.

Speaking to workers at Centennial Coal in the Hunter Valley, Prime Minister Julia Gillard assured workers their jobs were safe.

"This is an industry where businesses are making profits in the order of $1 million per worker. There's a lot of money to be made in coal mining."

Prime Minister Gillard also mentioned the high prices the coal industry is currently enjoying at the moment for its polluting product. Coal prices have doubled in recent years, from around $150 a tonne, to $300 a tonne. It hasn't reduced demand.

This is all certainly reassuring to the coal industry; not so to Australian solar power installation companies focused on empowering Australian households to generate their own clean electricity that have had to close their doors recently due to current unfavourable government policy in some states.

Coal's profits have come at a horrendous price to Australia and the world - the destruction of landscapes, loss of habitats, contamination of waterways, the plundering of resources and in how those resources have been consumed.

Unlike the energy that beats down upon Australia every day in the form of solar power and that blows across the continent as wind energy, once that coal is gone, it's gone forever.

It's damage that keeps on keeping on when the coal is burned; in the form of carbon dioxide emissions, particulates, atmospheric mercury and pollutants in coal ash.

Given such an incredible profit margin, maybe it's not such a big ask that these companies lose a little more fat in order to help repair and compensate for the damage that has been done over decades.

The fossil fuel industry has grown morbidly obese through massive subsidisation, which has been at the expense of the renewable energy revolution. Many have wondered where Australia would be now in terms of energy if more money had been funnelled towards renewables.

A low carb (carbon) diet is just what the doctor ordered. Compared to the cost of some other diets, $2 a tonne might seem incredibly cheap. Some would say it is perhaps too cheap to lose the toxic weight that is necessary given the state of the patient's (our planet's) health.