With the carbon tax repealed this month, it is only too clear as to which direction Australia is headed…and that is not towards clean energy. While the rest of the world pushed for cleaner renewable sources of electricity – we are going backwards.

The price for thermal coal is falling as it becomes clearer that the rest of the world is no longer interested in dirty energy. The two biggest importers of our coal are China and India. Both have made significant investments in clean energy and are reducing the amount of imports needed to create electricity. It won’t be long before China no longer needs to import coal at all and India will only be just behind them. As a result, the price of thermal coal is getting dirt cheap – to the point where Australia coal diggers lose dollars digging it up.

The above graph from Business Insiders shows how the desperation to sell has caused the price to plunge 10% in the last two months. It is now selling for below $70 on the spot market.

RenewEconomy posted the following:

The incoming president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Junker said he wanted Europe to lead at the upcoming global climate change talks, and said he supported much more ambitious targets for emission reductions, energy efficiency and renewable energy.

“We need to strengthen the share of renewable energies on our continent. This is not only a matter of a responsible climate change policy. It is, at the same time, an industrial policy imperative if we still want to have affordable energy at our disposal in the medium term. I strongly believe in the potential of green growth. I therefore want Europe’s Energy Union to become the world number one in renewable energies.”

“I would also like to significantly enhance energy efficiency beyond the 2020 objective, notably when it comes to buildings, and I am in favour of an ambitious, binding target to this end that continues the current energy efficiency pathway. I want the European Union to lead the fight against global warming ahead of the United Nations Paris meeting in 2015 and beyond, in line with the objective of limiting any temperature increase to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius.”

China want to announce and overall cap on emissions, India are building ‘mega’ capacity solar farms as well as implementing rent-a-roof scenarios, Chile has multiple large scale plants going ahead, Ghana has a 155MW solar farm under construction and South Africa has over 500MW of solar power operational – just to mention a few. At the same time $500 million worth of investment in South Australia has been held up pending the RET review – and that is only one state in Australia, the rest also follow in much the same manner.

Why are we the only Country going one direction (swimming upstream) while the rest of the world goes forward?