China is the world’s largest consumer of coal, using more coal each year than the United States, the European Union, and Japan combined. Coal power has been the dominant source of energy used to fuel the rapid economic development of China in the past two decades, with significant impact on its physical environment and human population. China relies on coal power for approximately 70-80% of its energy, with 45% used for the industrial sector and the remainder used to generate electricity. Nevertheless, China has been slowly entering into a new era where clean-fuel policies and new regulations are being implemented.
China burns half of the world’s coal and has caused more than half of total CO2 growth globally for the past decade, and many believe that the reversal in coal use may represent a significant progress in slowing down climate change. According to the China Electricity Council, utilization rates at China’s thermal power plants fired by coal, natural gas and oil, are set to fall further this year. Beijing is aiming to raise the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy use to 15% in 2020, up from 11.2%last year.
Lower coal use is already evident in China with power companies using a greater mix of hydro, nuclear and renewable options, especially wind. China’s coal imports fell 11% in 2014 compared to the previous year, the first annual decline in at least a decade. Lignite, thermal and metallurgical coal, hit a 43-month low of 16.78 million mt in January, falling 53.2% year on year – the seventh consecutive year-on-year decline and the biggest decline in the past 15 years.
The Australian and Indonesian coal exporters are obviously focusing on the world’s largest consumer of the fuel and they also have to deal with the quality checks under the new ash and Sulphur restrictions. As a result of this uncertainty, some are even holding back shipments to China.
Australian coal, which is considered the benchmark for Asia, slumped 30% last year and dropped below $60/tonne this month, the lowest level since May 2007. With both imports and prices of the commodity falling further and unless something changes dramatically in the future, it looks like coal will lose its position in the fossil fuel markets. As a result, freight rates for Panamaxes and Kamsarmaxes will most likely continue to be adversely affected.
Some say that the Indian market will still exhibit wide scale demand for the continued importing of coal at a large scale but, on the other hand, they will never push up prices. Indian power plants have their own limitations and they are not free to pass any rise in coal prices through to consumers. Still, in Indian East Coast ports coal stockpiles are rising up to record levels and the power plants are only buying as much as required from these huge reserves in major ports. Coal stocks at 16 main Indian ports were at 16.48 million metric tons as of March 20, whereas at the end of March last year, coal stocks were a mere 7.7 million metric tons.
From our side we can only hope that Asian countries and mainly China will continue to depend on coal at least for the next couple of years. It should take considerable time for China’s transition to more clean sources of energy to run its power plants. But on top of that we would also like to see the price of the commodity at sustainable levels that can support the industry and consequently demand for seaborne trade.
Christopher T. Whitty
Marketing Manager – Harbour Towage & Port Agency
Cotzias Intermodal Shipping Inc.