12 ms·

Coal Prices Rising Exponentially

117 points by lettergram 5y ago

wcoenen 5y ago
This is not just a coal story. Natural gas prices started rising a few months earlier, which put upward pressure on other energy commodities like coal and oil. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/natural-gas https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/natural-gas
- echelon 5y ago
  Divesting of oil, coal, and natural gas is premature. We can't meet our needs with clean energy alone. Fossil fuels will still be needed for many years to come. China needs more coal, Europe needs more natural gas. Winter is coming.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    This will stay true until we start divesting from fossil fuels and investing in clean energy.
  - _8j50 5y ago
    Some here appear to disagree, as if fossil fuels are taboo now. You can't say no to nuclear and fossil fuels, that's just reality for the next few decades. After mid 2030's I can see coal dying and oil dwindling like coal is now. Even if somehow everyone adopted electric cars in the next 10 years fully that still leaves giant ships, planes, trucks and so much more applications that are simply uneconomical to displace within a short time even if the replacement's value is the old use's current market value. Fossil getting expensive long term means all those natural gas sites that covid shattered could now reopen because it is becoming profitable to take them out of ground. This benefits oil companies, but it also creates an opportunity for alternative energy conversion. Why heat houses in winter using expensive/price-unstable natural gas when solar and wind exist, except saying no to nuclear meant it can't even be used as a backup to solar/wind which they need for obvious reasons. Unless of course there is a new revolution in battery tech I don't know about
    - chrisjc 5y ago
      I'd say some don't like to hear the truth. But I get it. It's painful and unpleasant to hear especially when it comes to having any sort of empathy for the demise of fossil fuels and all of the related industries. In addition to all the fossil fuel vehicles that you mentioned, you have also consider all of the industries and livelihoods as well (I'm sure you meant this implicitly). Those who work in oil-fields/sea-platforms, ICE factories, refinement equipment, and so on... If such a transition could happen over night, it would be devastating to so many industries, individuals... even entire economies and countries. While it's difficult to have any sympathy for the incumbent/legacy/ICE car manufactures being "unable to compete" with Tesla and new wave of Chinese EV manufactures, it can't be easy for any of them to transition without significant pain. Esp with all of the incentives, laws, etc... that have set up over the last century. You have billions of dollars of oil subsidies, franchise laws, worker unions, and so on. This where the government needs to step in. Fossil fuel subsidies need to be phased out. Training citizens with the knowledge and experience to work in these new industries needs to be provided. New incentives for manufactures to transition to sustainable methods of transportation need to be created. Old one eliminated. Ties to and influence of lobbies associated to legacy industries and fossil fuels need to be dismantled, even if the only way to go about that is through the creation of new, more powerful and influential lobbies that represent clean and progressive alternatives. I have my doubts that Tesla would be what it is today if they had played by the book, no matter how superior their technology is. Clean tech can't fill the void left by fossil fuels? Start promoting and evangelizing the advantages of nuclear options. I guess my point is it's going to be painful no matter how much people fetishize clean tech. Everyone is going to suffer in one way or another, but it has to happen and it needs to start now. I know that there are things being done about it already, but it's not enough.
      - angelzen 5y ago
        > Fossil fuel subsidies need to be phased out. Fossil fuel subsidies are a social stability measure. There are going to be hard times when people can't afford fuel to heat their homes in winter, and have to endure lectures by the private-jet-to-next-climate-conference-crowd on how morally flawed they are for still affording to light up a candle at night.
  - liotier 5y ago
    > We can't meet our needs with clean energy alone. Nuclear energy does that just fine - as a result, France is the lowest-carbon major nation.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      The jury is still out. We have not gone through a handful of construction/decommission cycles of nuclear power plants, simply because the lifetime of a nuclear power plant is over half a century or more, and France started its nuclear push as late as the '70s.
  - lettergram 5y ago
    The U.S. has had stagnant energy production since 2008 https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-... The U.S. generates about as much energy from renewables as it does from nuclear. Combined (nuclear + renewables) only produces around 40% of the energy the U.S. consumes. In 2008, the combined nuclear + renewable energy accounted for 29% of the energy consumed by the U.S. (green energy production is only up 100% in 10 years). Mostly there was just a swap from Coal power to Natural gas power. Put another way, it'll be decades with no energy growth to replace the natural gas and coal energy production; baring some massive changes. At the end of the day, renewables are not going to cut it. We need a massive increase in nuclear, it's the only clear way. If the goal is to switch off coal and natural gas (which IMO, we should just keep using coal + natural gas). Cheaper energy, is the quickest way to reduce poverty.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      This argument is incoherent. Renewables did not force out existing fossil capacity on their own, so they are inferior to a nuclear plan where we do force out fossil capacity? Why not build renewables and also force out that fossil capacity?
- varjag 5y ago
  The gas hike is mostly the outcome of Putin's squeeze onto Western Europe to adopt NS2 on his terms.
  - hourislate 5y ago
    Who would of thought? Didn't some US Administration hint at this, that Russia would leverage the pipe to fuck Europe? Unfortunately the current US Administration actually gave Putin the green light to fuck the Euro poors, sad..... Clown world....
    - wtf_is_up 5y ago
      I can think of 2 instances where Trump publicly questioned EU members' reliance on Russian energy. Once when he visited Poland and then later at a G7 summit.
      - hourislate 5y ago
        Yeah, that was what I was referring to. Trump was correct, Russia will fuck the Euro Poors like it is doing now. Biden who has dementia has no plan and basically gave Putin the green light.
    - the-dude 5y ago
      You mean the US actively tries to prevent NS2? As in sanctioning companies working on it? I just submitted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28828492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28828492
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    Many companies have confirmed that Gazprom actually adheres to the existing contracts and prices. Gazprom is not, however, offering short-term sales at the currently negotiated long-term prices; in other words, Gazprom is not selling gas over the counter at 1/5 the market rate. This seems to me like one of these opportunities where some EU gov'ts are blaming Russia for something in a way that doesn't make too much sense once you look at it for more than five seconds, yet sounds superficially convincing. Things like that are always unfortunate when you could leverage more substantial criticism instead; hardly a tall order with Russia. See e.g. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russias-gazprom-feels-heat-over-europes-red-hot-gas-prices-2021-10-06/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russias-gazprom-feel...
roenxi 5y ago
Not totally surprising. The way I've seen it working is people trade around where the price was yesterday and it goes up and down a bit. Then every so often - when not enough coal is being produced - the buffers at the mines and ports run out and the situation becomes a straight auction for the last scraps. That usually makes the price graph draw a ski-jump shape. It is a pretty good time to be a coal mine. A lot of investment has been scared out of the sector, so not so much competition. But people still keep using coal.
- azalemeth 5y ago
  Even though they really, really shouldn't. As you undoubtedly know, it's a terribly dirty fuel source that is destroying the planet. When I saw this headline, my gut reaction was actually "good -- I hope that makes other fuel sources more competitive". I then realised that I am not an economist, and that it would have the opposite effect -- increasing production. One thing I'd love to see come out of COP26 is an internationally agreed minimum tariff per ton of CO2e, including electricity weighted by its means of production. We want coal to be very expensive to buy (and very cheap to sell).
  - rustnote 5y ago
    Coal isn't just for electricity, it usually rises and falls with the price of steel because it's needed for the process. Also has use in a bunch of other things like water filters.
    - aceazzameen 5y ago
      I thought water filters use charcoal, not coal.
  - dustintrex 5y ago
    It's going to have both effects simultaneously. Production is not going to increase very much overnight, because coal mines are not particularly elastic. However, most coal consumers are actually in the market for electricity, so high coal prices will encourage substitution with alternatives like solar.
ludston 5y ago
Article unclear: Thermal coal or coking coal? If this is for all coal, I would expect the price to go up as demand for thermal coal decreases (as coking coal is higher quality and therefore costs more). Although some cursory googling indicates that the prices of both have recently increased.
- pomian 5y ago
  Piece rise was mostly to metallurgical coal, over the last year. However the 25% spike in natural gas prices in Europe in the last month, are now affecting thermal coal prices.
cortexio 5y ago
it will go down again soon. these things happen. it cant keep going up, capitalism will fix it.
drfxyjhdyfrhgc 5y ago
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-30/china-orders-top-energy-firms-to-secure-supplies-at-all-costs https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-30/china-ord... >China Orders Top Energy Firms to Secure Supplies at All Costs
theshrike79 5y ago
Another point for using nuclear power to replace fossil fuels as soon as possible and after that replacing nuclear with renewables. Now we're replacing nuclear with renewables, which is just ass-backwards.
- addicted 5y ago
  Nuclear is ridiculously more expensive than renewables. Now is when you replace the fossil fuels with renewables, while you still have fossil fuels in the mix to provide base load capacity, and once we’ve hit the threshold where we need more base load, and if storage hasn’t gotten cheap enough, is when you start bringing a few nuclear plants online.
  - cpursley 5y ago
    Maybe in the US it's ridiculously expensive, but not in the civilized world.
    - adrianN 5y ago
      Where is this civilized world where nuclear is cheap and fast to build?
      - E_x_B 5y ago
        In Finland, brought from Areva-Siemens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#... Total cost to owner (TVO) for this 1600 MW EPR will be little less than 6 billion euros and the rest of the cost (5 billion euros) will be paid by Areva i.e. French citizens as taxes. Building of the plant started 2005 and after the latest delays the reactor is supposed to go critical for the first time during January 2022. It was supposed to be ready during 2010. As you can see: Cheap and fast to build. Areva figured that this was an easy way to open the European nuclear power plant markets after the political damage to the industry due to Chernobyl. They did not take into account the fact that a lot of the professionals required were already retired and at the same time the safety regulations were much tighter than before.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
amelius 5y ago
Everything bad for the climate is having price surges lately. See also Bitcoin.
- politician 5y ago
  It’s almost like we thought that coal- and nuclear- shaming was all the planning that we needed to switch to renewables and avoid an energy crunch. We mock Bitcoin, but China isn’t just shutting down Bitcoin, but also its steel and aluminum foundries, its semiconductor fabs, and adjacent industries to cut power demand. They need to limit blackouts during winter to stave off popular uprisings.
  - anm89 5y ago
    Hadn't connected the Bitcoin ban to the power shortages but in retrospect it seems obvious
  - themaninthedark 5y ago
    Do you have a source on that? Not that I doubt it but if that is true, then we will see some serious market issues in the near future. Steel is already high and the chip issues are bad too.
    - politician 5y ago
      Nasdaq Sept 2021 Steel, Al, Cement https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/chinas-yunnan-imposes-output-curbs-on-aluminium-steel-cement-makers-2021-09-13 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/chinas-yunnan-imposes-output... Reuters Sept 2021 Electrical Components https://www.reuters.com/technology/many-apple-tesla-suppliers-halt-production-china-amid-power-pinch-2021-09-27/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/many-apple-tesla-supplier... Reuters Oct 2021 Consumers to see increased energy prices https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-liberalise-thermal-power-pricing-tackle-energy-crisis-2021-10-12/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-liberalise-thermal...
- danguson 5y ago
  I agree with you, and I think that they're preparing for the season as they need energy. Loss of further resources might greatly affect China.
alexpetralia 5y ago
Isn't all inflation exponential?
- bell-cot 5y ago
  Mathematically, yes. (More-or-less.) Commodity price fluctuations usually are not. But "rising exponentially" seems to have become a way to say "going up very fast, and you should get excited about it!".
  - blitzar 5y ago
    It is compound growth (because we dont really allow deflation for various social and economic reasons) therefore it grows exponentially
jugg1es 5y ago
This is going to be a major problem this winter because this is due to supply. And NG/oil supply is low too. Investing in coal is not considered a good look anymore and so mines have closed.
ploden 5y ago
Price instability in fossil fuels is a big boost for renewables. The industry has always been boom and bust, but now consumers have a choice.
analog31 5y ago
Ah, so it looks like coal still has a use after all, like Bitcoin.
angelzen 5y ago
People fail to realize that modern economic activity is a small veneer on top of vast energy consumption. Coal & gas prices exploding will reflect into exploding inflation, which will reflect into imploding purchasing power before long.
- asow92 5y ago
  It's been a good run all in all :cheers:

117 points by lettergram 5y ago

This is not just a coal story. Natural gas prices started rising a few months earlier, which put upward pressure on other energy commodities like coal and oil. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/natural-gas https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/natural-gas

echelon 5y ago
Divesting of oil, coal, and natural gas is premature. We can't meet our needs with clean energy alone. Fossil fuels will still be needed for many years to come. China needs more coal, Europe needs more natural gas. Winter is coming.
- adrianN 5y ago
  This will stay true until we start divesting from fossil fuels and investing in clean energy.
- _8j50 5y ago
  Some here appear to disagree, as if fossil fuels are taboo now. You can't say no to nuclear and fossil fuels, that's just reality for the next few decades. After mid 2030's I can see coal dying and oil dwindling like coal is now. Even if somehow everyone adopted electric cars in the next 10 years fully that still leaves giant ships, planes, trucks and so much more applications that are simply uneconomical to displace within a short time even if the replacement's value is the old use's current market value. Fossil getting expensive long term means all those natural gas sites that covid shattered could now reopen because it is becoming profitable to take them out of ground. This benefits oil companies, but it also creates an opportunity for alternative energy conversion. Why heat houses in winter using expensive/price-unstable natural gas when solar and wind exist, except saying no to nuclear meant it can't even be used as a backup to solar/wind which they need for obvious reasons. Unless of course there is a new revolution in battery tech I don't know about
  - chrisjc 5y ago
    I'd say some don't like to hear the truth. But I get it. It's painful and unpleasant to hear especially when it comes to having any sort of empathy for the demise of fossil fuels and all of the related industries. In addition to all the fossil fuel vehicles that you mentioned, you have also consider all of the industries and livelihoods as well (I'm sure you meant this implicitly). Those who work in oil-fields/sea-platforms, ICE factories, refinement equipment, and so on... If such a transition could happen over night, it would be devastating to so many industries, individuals... even entire economies and countries. While it's difficult to have any sympathy for the incumbent/legacy/ICE car manufactures being "unable to compete" with Tesla and new wave of Chinese EV manufactures, it can't be easy for any of them to transition without significant pain. Esp with all of the incentives, laws, etc... that have set up over the last century. You have billions of dollars of oil subsidies, franchise laws, worker unions, and so on. This where the government needs to step in. Fossil fuel subsidies need to be phased out. Training citizens with the knowledge and experience to work in these new industries needs to be provided. New incentives for manufactures to transition to sustainable methods of transportation need to be created. Old one eliminated. Ties to and influence of lobbies associated to legacy industries and fossil fuels need to be dismantled, even if the only way to go about that is through the creation of new, more powerful and influential lobbies that represent clean and progressive alternatives. I have my doubts that Tesla would be what it is today if they had played by the book, no matter how superior their technology is. Clean tech can't fill the void left by fossil fuels? Start promoting and evangelizing the advantages of nuclear options. I guess my point is it's going to be painful no matter how much people fetishize clean tech. Everyone is going to suffer in one way or another, but it has to happen and it needs to start now. I know that there are things being done about it already, but it's not enough.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      > Fossil fuel subsidies need to be phased out. Fossil fuel subsidies are a social stability measure. There are going to be hard times when people can't afford fuel to heat their homes in winter, and have to endure lectures by the private-jet-to-next-climate-conference-crowd on how morally flawed they are for still affording to light up a candle at night.
- liotier 5y ago
  > We can't meet our needs with clean energy alone. Nuclear energy does that just fine - as a result, France is the lowest-carbon major nation.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    The jury is still out. We have not gone through a handful of construction/decommission cycles of nuclear power plants, simply because the lifetime of a nuclear power plant is over half a century or more, and France started its nuclear push as late as the '70s.
- lettergram 5y ago
  The U.S. has had stagnant energy production since 2008 https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-... The U.S. generates about as much energy from renewables as it does from nuclear. Combined (nuclear + renewables) only produces around 40% of the energy the U.S. consumes. In 2008, the combined nuclear + renewable energy accounted for 29% of the energy consumed by the U.S. (green energy production is only up 100% in 10 years). Mostly there was just a swap from Coal power to Natural gas power. Put another way, it'll be decades with no energy growth to replace the natural gas and coal energy production; baring some massive changes. At the end of the day, renewables are not going to cut it. We need a massive increase in nuclear, it's the only clear way. If the goal is to switch off coal and natural gas (which IMO, we should just keep using coal + natural gas). Cheaper energy, is the quickest way to reduce poverty.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    This argument is incoherent. Renewables did not force out existing fossil capacity on their own, so they are inferior to a nuclear plan where we do force out fossil capacity? Why not build renewables and also force out that fossil capacity?
varjag 5y ago
The gas hike is mostly the outcome of Putin's squeeze onto Western Europe to adopt NS2 on his terms.
- hourislate 5y ago
  Who would of thought? Didn't some US Administration hint at this, that Russia would leverage the pipe to fuck Europe? Unfortunately the current US Administration actually gave Putin the green light to fuck the Euro poors, sad..... Clown world....
  - wtf_is_up 5y ago
    I can think of 2 instances where Trump publicly questioned EU members' reliance on Russian energy. Once when he visited Poland and then later at a G7 summit.
    - hourislate 5y ago
      Yeah, that was what I was referring to. Trump was correct, Russia will fuck the Euro Poors like it is doing now. Biden who has dementia has no plan and basically gave Putin the green light.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    You mean the US actively tries to prevent NS2? As in sanctioning companies working on it? I just submitted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28828492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28828492
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  Many companies have confirmed that Gazprom actually adheres to the existing contracts and prices. Gazprom is not, however, offering short-term sales at the currently negotiated long-term prices; in other words, Gazprom is not selling gas over the counter at 1/5 the market rate. This seems to me like one of these opportunities where some EU gov'ts are blaming Russia for something in a way that doesn't make too much sense once you look at it for more than five seconds, yet sounds superficially convincing. Things like that are always unfortunate when you could leverage more substantial criticism instead; hardly a tall order with Russia. See e.g. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russias-gazprom-feels-heat-over-europes-red-hot-gas-prices-2021-10-06/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russias-gazprom-feel...

roenxi 5y ago

Not totally surprising. The way I've seen it working is people trade around where the price was yesterday and it goes up and down a bit. Then every so often - when not enough coal is being produced - the buffers at the mines and ports run out and the situation becomes a straight auction for the last scraps. That usually makes the price graph draw a ski-jump shape. It is a pretty good time to be a coal mine. A lot of investment has been scared out of the sector, so not so much competition. But people still keep using coal.

azalemeth 5y ago
Even though they really, really shouldn't. As you undoubtedly know, it's a terribly dirty fuel source that is destroying the planet. When I saw this headline, my gut reaction was actually "good -- I hope that makes other fuel sources more competitive". I then realised that I am not an economist, and that it would have the opposite effect -- increasing production. One thing I'd love to see come out of COP26 is an internationally agreed minimum tariff per ton of CO2e, including electricity weighted by its means of production. We want coal to be very expensive to buy (and very cheap to sell).
- rustnote 5y ago
  Coal isn't just for electricity, it usually rises and falls with the price of steel because it's needed for the process. Also has use in a bunch of other things like water filters.
  - aceazzameen 5y ago
    I thought water filters use charcoal, not coal.
- dustintrex 5y ago
  It's going to have both effects simultaneously. Production is not going to increase very much overnight, because coal mines are not particularly elastic. However, most coal consumers are actually in the market for electricity, so high coal prices will encourage substitution with alternatives like solar.

ludston 5y ago

Article unclear: Thermal coal or coking coal? If this is for all coal, I would expect the price to go up as demand for thermal coal decreases (as coking coal is higher quality and therefore costs more). Although some cursory googling indicates that the prices of both have recently increased.

pomian 5y ago
Piece rise was mostly to metallurgical coal, over the last year. However the 25% spike in natural gas prices in Europe in the last month, are now affecting thermal coal prices.

cortexio 5y ago

it will go down again soon. these things happen. it cant keep going up, capitalism will fix it.

drfxyjhdyfrhgc 5y ago

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-30/china-orders-top-energy-firms-to-secure-supplies-at-all-costs https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-30/china-ord... >China Orders Top Energy Firms to Secure Supplies at All Costs

theshrike79 5y ago

Another point for using nuclear power to replace fossil fuels as soon as possible and after that replacing nuclear with renewables. Now we're replacing nuclear with renewables, which is just ass-backwards.

addicted 5y ago
Nuclear is ridiculously more expensive than renewables. Now is when you replace the fossil fuels with renewables, while you still have fossil fuels in the mix to provide base load capacity, and once we’ve hit the threshold where we need more base load, and if storage hasn’t gotten cheap enough, is when you start bringing a few nuclear plants online.
- cpursley 5y ago
  Maybe in the US it's ridiculously expensive, but not in the civilized world.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Where is this civilized world where nuclear is cheap and fast to build?
    - E_x_B 5y ago
      In Finland, brought from Areva-Siemens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#... Total cost to owner (TVO) for this 1600 MW EPR will be little less than 6 billion euros and the rest of the cost (5 billion euros) will be paid by Areva i.e. French citizens as taxes. Building of the plant started 2005 and after the latest delays the reactor is supposed to go critical for the first time during January 2022. It was supposed to be ready during 2010. As you can see: Cheap and fast to build. Areva figured that this was an easy way to open the European nuclear power plant markets after the political damage to the industry due to Chernobyl. They did not take into account the fact that a lot of the professionals required were already retired and at the same time the safety regulations were much tighter than before.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

amelius 5y ago

Everything bad for the climate is having price surges lately. See also Bitcoin.

politician 5y ago
It’s almost like we thought that coal- and nuclear- shaming was all the planning that we needed to switch to renewables and avoid an energy crunch. We mock Bitcoin, but China isn’t just shutting down Bitcoin, but also its steel and aluminum foundries, its semiconductor fabs, and adjacent industries to cut power demand. They need to limit blackouts during winter to stave off popular uprisings.
- anm89 5y ago
  Hadn't connected the Bitcoin ban to the power shortages but in retrospect it seems obvious
- themaninthedark 5y ago
  Do you have a source on that? Not that I doubt it but if that is true, then we will see some serious market issues in the near future. Steel is already high and the chip issues are bad too.
  - politician 5y ago
    Nasdaq Sept 2021 Steel, Al, Cement https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/chinas-yunnan-imposes-output-curbs-on-aluminium-steel-cement-makers-2021-09-13 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/chinas-yunnan-imposes-output... Reuters Sept 2021 Electrical Components https://www.reuters.com/technology/many-apple-tesla-suppliers-halt-production-china-amid-power-pinch-2021-09-27/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/many-apple-tesla-supplier... Reuters Oct 2021 Consumers to see increased energy prices https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-liberalise-thermal-power-pricing-tackle-energy-crisis-2021-10-12/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-liberalise-thermal...
danguson 5y ago
I agree with you, and I think that they're preparing for the season as they need energy. Loss of further resources might greatly affect China.

alexpetralia 5y ago

Isn't all inflation exponential?

bell-cot 5y ago
Mathematically, yes. (More-or-less.) Commodity price fluctuations usually are not. But "rising exponentially" seems to have become a way to say "going up very fast, and you should get excited about it!".
- blitzar 5y ago
  It is compound growth (because we dont really allow deflation for various social and economic reasons) therefore it grows exponentially

jugg1es 5y ago

This is going to be a major problem this winter because this is due to supply. And NG/oil supply is low too. Investing in coal is not considered a good look anymore and so mines have closed.

ploden 5y ago

Price instability in fossil fuels is a big boost for renewables. The industry has always been boom and bust, but now consumers have a choice.

analog31 5y ago

Ah, so it looks like coal still has a use after all, like Bitcoin.

angelzen 5y ago

People fail to realize that modern economic activity is a small veneer on top of vast energy consumption. Coal & gas prices exploding will reflect into exploding inflation, which will reflect into imploding purchasing power before long.

asow92 5y ago
It's been a good run all in all :cheers: