Elon Musk's intervention in Australia's energy crisis is widening a divide over the future of coal.
"Coal doesn't have a long-term future," Musk told reporters in Adelaide last week during a short trip to Australia.
A series of power outages in South Australia the past year spurred fears of more widespread blackouts across the nation's electricity market and raised questions as to why one of the world's largest producers of coal and gas is struggling to keep the lights on in a mainland state.
Australia exported more coal than any other country in 2015, and has the fourth-largest share of the planet's coal resources, the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science said in December.
"The high risk and cost associated with new coal plants make investors and financiers run a million miles from it in Australia," said Ali Asghar, an analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Sydney.
Doing so makes little sense, given that the cost of building cleaner, so-called high-efficiency, low-emission coal plants in Australia exceeds that of new projects relying on solar, wind, or gas, Asghar said.
"As solar and wind become cheaper and continue to undermine the economics of operating coal, investment in new coal plants become an even riskier proposition."
more information: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-13/elon-musk-exposes-deep-coal-divide-in-energy-strapped-australia