Analysts see Whitehaven as a solid performer with good growth prospects despite the low coal price.
But German industry has become restive at paying much higher rates for power than its competitors, and wants the kind of electricity reform that would price coal out.
However, in 2009, the carbon intensity of the electric power sector decreased by nearly 4.3 percent, primarily due to fuel switching as the price of coal rose 6.8 percent from 2008 to 2009 while the comparable price of natural gas fell 48 percent on a per Btu basis.
Europe has a price on carbon, via cap and trade, but it burned more coal last year because its price on carbon is so low in the wake of the recession and because it needed coal to make up for the disruption of oil exports from Libya.
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Alpha coal is priced at 6% off the benchmark price of thermal coal exports from Newcastle in Australia.
In Michigan, meanwhile, the public service commission there says that the 10 percent target by 2015 is saving money for energy customers, largely because the price of future advanced coal generation is greater than the current subsidized price of green power.
America has plenty of coal, but as exports grow its price will start tracking world coal prices.
Yanzhou indicates in its latest SEC filing June 29 that it has contracts to sell 50 tons of coal at an average selling price 17.6% higher than it received on the 80 million tons of total coal it sold in 2009.
The cheap natural gas has pulled the price of coal down, though less dramatically.
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The price of coal has gone up and Europe is faced with an energy gap.
But the other trend is that the price of coal and other fossil fuels are going up.
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At the same time, a new rule from the Environmental Protection Agency is pushing the price of coal up.
Nobody knows if thorium reactors can compete on price with coal and gas.
In recent weeks, it has restricted power utilities from raising prices even as the price of coal has risen dramatically.
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This has led to an oversupply of coal, pushing the price down.
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Wind is closing in on the price of coal, as well.
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Part of the problem is weakening growth in exports, driven largely by a recent drop in the price of coal and other commodities that Indonesia sells overseas.
First, the price of coal's competitor, natural gas, is decreasing.
Wayne Thomas said the rise in the price of coal and the quality of the anthracite in the local area had seen mining become more profitable in recent years and led to a "resurgence of interest".
An interview published last year in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists detailed how at age 88, he was working on a new approach to photovoltaic thin-film production that he said would allow factories to make enough solar panels in a year to produce at least one gigawatt of electricity annually roughly the scale of a nuclear power plant at the price of coal.
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In December, steelmakers suffered the doubling of the benchmark price of coking coal, which fuels the blast furnaces that turn iron into steel.
The additional nuclear power plants would also have the advantage of being less vulnerable to fuel price changes than coal or gas-fired generation, helping to enhance the security of electricity supplies.
Solar PV is coming down in price so quickly that as its supporters insist, it will be directly price competitive with coal fired electricity from the grid in the next few years.
Two earlier initiatives, fostering renewable electricity generation at a price cheaper than coal-fired power and promotion of electric vehicles (presumably powered by renewable power) were announced in November (See " Google Goes Green").
This will likely interest power companies in Australia, given that the government has recently passed a major carbon pricing law, which will assist in making geothermal power more price competitive with coal and gas.
The aggressiveness of Chinese firms in securing oil and coal reserves at almost any price have hit Americans at a particularly bad time, since the U.S. is so dependent on automobiles for transport and coal for electricity power plants.
Just five years ago, coal was flourishing in the U.S. With electricity demand and the price of natural gas both rising, coal was viewed as essential to keeping power costs under control.
The metals and coal sectors aren't demand driven, but they are price sensitive to the dearth of incremental supply, particularly coal, iron ore and even copper with all its mine outages.
As mentioned above, higher coal prices support nat gas prices by allowing for a higher coal-to-gas substitution price.
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In the beautiful, but poor, Asturias region in north-western Spain, the subsidy underwrites production of coal at seven times the world price.
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