Zoltan Berki usually wakes up before dawn, as his five small children sleep next door, to feed the old iron furnace that stands in a wall cavity to warm up both rooms. This is the only part of his house that he can afford to heat during winter.
Western Canada: Alberta reverses course on coal policy that could have allowed mountain-top mines in face of widespread backlash theglobeandmail.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theglobeandmail.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Doubts are surfacing over the Alberta government’s decision to restore a policy that protects the Rocky Mountains from coal mining.
“I think [it] did a bait and switch and I’m very disappointed,” said Kevin Van Tighem, a Southern Alberta landowner and environmentalist.
Energy Minister Sonya Savage, after overwhelming public opposition, on Monday brought back a 1976 policy that keeps open-pit coal mines out of most of the province’s Rockies and foothills. She added that her government made the policy more rigorous.
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According to new research from Kpler, China have pursued increasingly aggressive import restrictions for Australian metallurgical coal tonnage. In January alone, Australian coking coal arrivals finished at just 0.1 million t, well under year earlier volumes near 3.9 million t. The move to restrict Australian tonnage is having a predictably negative impact on overall Chinese imports of metallurgical coal, which ended January at just 0.88 million t, 3.56 million t lower against year earlier levels.
Chinese import restrictions introduce a degree of uncertainty that is making life difficult for domestic steel mills. In 2020, Australia accounted for 60% of all seaborne metallurgical departures worldwide. On the year, Chinese imports of seaborne metallurgical coal volumes accounted for 15% of the global total, of which nearly 85% was sourced from Australia. As a result, China is struggling to secure alternative sources of production. The US (14% global market share) is the