More Trouble For Adani’s Australian Carmichael Coal Mine Project

Coal mining

Image: semevent

The coal-fired heat is being turned up on Adani – the question is, will the company finally choke on the toxic smoke being created and abandon its Carmichael coal mine plans?

The ABC reports Environmental Justice Australia (EJA) has referred a complaint from a jobseeker and the Australian Unemployed Workers Union (AUWU) concerning Adani to the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC).

The complaint relates to claims Adani has reportedly made concerning the number of jobs that will be generated from the Carmichael project in Queensland.

EJA says this is creating false hope and driving job seekers to pay out for expensive courses in an attempt to increase their chances of getting a job at the mine – jobs that may never exist.

“ACCC is urged to take action to prevent the continued dissemination of Adani’s misleading or deceptive statements that are directed at jobseekers,” said EJA lawyer David Barnden.

EJA’s complaint to the ACCC can be viewed here (PDF).

According to The Conversation, the number of jobs being bandied about by Adani and some politicians is 10,000. However, the number that appears on approval documents on the Queensland Government’s Department of State Development projects website is up to 6,395 jobs, with 3,920 being ongoing.

That figure may also be optimistic. Adani’s special witness, Jerome Fahrer, told the Queensland Land Court in 2015 the mine would create just 1,464 net jobs; taking into construction, ongoing employment and job losses from other major projects.

Just as a comparison, Green Energy Markets’ latest Renewable Energy Index indicated the small-scale solar power systems installed during October in Queensland supported 1,347 full time equivalent jobs. Add in large-scale renewables and the number was 7,194.

Financing the project is also presenting some major challenges for Adani, Yesterday, the ABC reported former foreign minister Bob Carr said Adani won’t have any luck sourcing financing from China.

“”I’ve been talking to both government and financial institutions at a level that makes me confident there will be no financial support for this project,” said Mr. Carr.

Last week, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) officially quashed rumours it would be providing financing.

“ICBC has not been, and does not intend to be, engaged in arranging financing for this project,” says a statement from the institution. “ICBC attaches great importance to its social responsibilities and keenly promotes ‘green financing’. In Australia ICBC has provided financing to a series of renewable energy projects.”

While ICBC says its stance is without prejudice, there’s  no lack of vocal opposition to the mine; which it seems will predominantly produce low quality, high ash coal.

A report published in June by Deloitte provided 56 billion reasons to dump Adani’s Carmichael coal mine project; and in May, the Climate Council and Oxfam warned the project represents a major conflict with Australia’s commitment to addressing climate change.

Trivia: the burning of coal is responsible for more than 800,000 premature deaths annually around the world – just through air pollution.

About Michael Bloch

Michael caught the solar power bug after purchasing components to cobble together a small off-grid PV system in 2008. He's been reporting on Australian and international solar energy news ever since.

Comments

  1. Patrick Comerford says

    Anastacia Paluzecks late conversion to reject taxpayer funding for this coal mine and the very different election result she now enjoys with a majority government shows that this mine is well and truly rejected by reasonable thinking people and now it seems the financiers also.

    • Ronald Brakels says

      When Chinese banks go out of their way to say they won’t touch it with a 1.94 bu pole, you know a project stinks.

    • Adani’s queensland coal mine as of 2016 has a lease for 60 years with an annual output of 27 million tonnes if this coal ends up going to India because no one else wants it .and if this mine was India’s only source of coal the entire 60 year output of this mine would only last India 18 months because as of 2016 India was burning 966 million tonnes of coal per year
      What we have to remember is that coal is the remains of plants and trees that lived millions of years ago and when they were alive they were absorbing co2
      from the atmosphere releasing the oxygen back into the atmosphere and storing the carbon which when they died took that carbon to their graves with them
      We are now digging up that carbon and putting it back into the atmosphere which could return the atmosphere to a time when it could not support life as we know it.
      if we continue to pump carbon back into the atmosphere that has taken millions of years to remove ,we could end up setting off a chain reaction that will see carbon returning to the atmosphere at a rate that we we no longer have control of.

  2. Now, here is an interesting aspect to the Adani situation…

    At
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-07/corporate-tax-data-released-by-ato/9236878
    as viewed at 1835 WST (UTC+0800) 10 December 2017, is


    Name Total income $ Taxable income $ Tax payable $

    ADANI ABBOT POINT TERMINAL HOLDINGS PTY LTD 351,475,333
    ADANI MINERALS PTY LTD 232,965,003
    ADANI MINING PTY LTD 139,557,178
    giving Adani a total income of $723,997,514
    – yes, folks, only 724 million ozzie dollars of income, of which, none is taxable.

    Now, wouldn’t YOU, the reader, like to be able to (a bit like the prime minister) be able to make hundreds of millions of dollars a year, in income, without having to bother to pay any tax on your income?

    It sounds a bit like the Australian prime minister, who clearly has no allegiance to Australia (how many hundreds of millions of ozzie dollars of his ill-gotten gains, has he “invested” in the Cayman Islands, to evade Australian taxes on his ill-gotten gains?).

    I think the question needs to be asked – as it is clearly, a cheaper investment for entities like Adani and the prime minister – how much money has Adani “donated” to the parliamentary political parties, so that it can evade Australian taxes and get preferential treatment, with absolute disregard for the consequences (like the African conglomerate that obtained “benefits” from “donations” to the LNP and possibly other parliamentary political parties, with the consequences causing deliberate harm to Australian state economies and to Australian owned businesses)?

  3. Oh, and, the African conglomerate that has made “donations” to the LNP for many years, apart from the “benefits” that it received for its donations, is shown as paying about 0.5% of its income in tax.

    Wouldn’t YOU like to not need to pay more than 0.5% of YOUR income, in tax?

    You pay more than that?

    Obviously, you have not paid big enough “donations” to the people in power.

    The government certainly looks after its mates (and, Turnbull’s sugar daddy).

  4. Adani’s queensland coal mine as of 2016 has a lease for 60 years with an annual output of 27 million tonnes if this coal ends up going to India because no one else wants it .and if this mine was India’s only source of coal the entire 60 year output of this mine would only last India 18 months because as of 2016 India was burning 966 million tonnes of coal per year
    What we have to remember is that coal is the remains of plants and trees that lived millions of years ago and when they were alive they were absorbing co2
    from the atmosphere releasing the oxygen back into the atmosphere and storing the carbon which when they died took that carbon to their graves with them
    We are now digging up that carbon and putting it back into the atmosphere which will return the atmosphere to time when it could not support life as we know it.

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