And it’s not going well world-wide. Here’s just one tidbit for India:
Power plants have failed to secure coal shipments and are reluctant to buy imports now because of the high price, according to Indian officials who have been urging utilities to purchase what they need. The country’s Central Electricity Authority warned Tuesday that nearly half of India’s coal power plants — 63 out of 135 — have two days or less of coal supplies, while stocks have been exhausted at 17 facilities.
Rahul Tongia, an expert on energy and sustainability at the Brookings Institution, said the coal shortage was likely to extend for five months and the Indian government would soon face difficult choices. Already, Indian aluminum producers have complained about power shortages bringing smelters to a halt.
“Are you going to shut down power for a bunch of people, a.k.a. voters? Or are you going to shut down industry?” Tongia said. “My money,” he said, is on a government decision that “they will not depress industry because it’s so critical in a post-covid recovery.”
In India, a country that has come under mounting international pressure and criticism for its refusal to commit to carbon emissions reduction targets, some officials and analysts have argued that the coal shortage has highlighted the enduring importance of a dirty but essential energy source. Even as India embarks on an ambitious project to deploy 450 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030, its officials have talked up the necessity of accelerating, rather than slashing, coal production. [WaPo]
That’s quite alarming, from the lack of energy to the frantic attempt to make coal an important resource – and not a resource that is endangering ecology, livability, and therefore economy if it is used.
Connecting this to another of this blog’s themes, if I owned any cryptocurrencies which have not been optimized for power consumption – we don’t own any at all – such as bitcoin I’d be definitely nervous at this news, because such cryptocurrencies are notorious for energy consumption.
If this doesn’t turn around soon, countries may find it necessary to use triage on consumption of energy resources – and it’s quite possible that cryptocurrencies will not be considered to be as important as, say, physical plant of critical services. I know that if I were in the triage decision matrix and cryptocurrencies were large consumers of energy in my region while hospitals went begging, I’d be voting to shut them down.
In other words, I’d be looking to get out of cryptocurrency if I were in it, because cash and bank-held funds will be far more accessible than cryptocurrency potentially crippled by a energy-short world. Yeah, even though it’s all distributed, I’d still worry.
