Is this the final nail in Adani’s coffin?

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By Leith van Onselen

The likelihood of Adani’s Carmichael mega coal mine project going ahead continues to shrink.

Before its re-election last year, Queensland’s Palaszczuk Labor Government promised to veto Adani’s application for a loan from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) for a vital rail line.

Last week, federal Labor Leader, Bill Shorten, stepped-up his attack on the Adani project, threatening the mine’s licence. This followed a new ReachTEL poll of 3,312, which showed that 65.1% of Australians opposed or strongly opposed the coal mine – a 13.2% rise from March last year (51.9%).

The ReachTEL poll also showed that 73.5% of Australians support stopping the expansion of all coal mining, with respondents instead wanting more solar power and battery storage to reduce the threat of climate change.

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Finally, over the weekend, Liberal minister Karen Andrews confirmed that the Adani Carmichael mine will not receive NAIF funding for the rail line. From The Guardian:

The announcement by Karen Andrews on Sunday is a major blow to Adani, which has sought a $900m concessional loan for rail to link the Carmichael mine to port – and could spell the end of the project entirely if it can’t secure private finance…

Andrews, the assistant minister for vocational education and skills, said that since “all the approvals are already in place for the Adani mine” it was now “just a financing issue for Adani” whether the mine goes ahead.

“Let’s be clear, though, given the position that the Labor state government took to the last election and their election, there won’t be financing from the federal government,” Andrews told Sky News.

Asked to confirm there would not be federal financing, she said: “No – it won’t be proceeding. For there to be money available from the Naif, that would require the support from the Queensland Labor government”.

“So the advice I’ve been given from the resources minister is the financing won’t proceed.”

MB has strongly opposed the Adani project from the get-go.

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India’s Minister for State Power has already acknowledged that the cost of solar power is now cheaper than coal:

Therefore, the Adani Carmichael Project risks becoming an unviable stranded asset, and Australian taxpayers would have risked losing their money had the Government lent $900 million for the project.

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Moreover, the Carmichael project would flood the world with more cheap coal, thus depressing its price and putting non-subsidised mines in NSW and QLD out of business, resulting in job losses. It also jeopardises the environment – both globally via exacerbating climate change and locally through threatening the Great Barrier Reef.

The employment payoffs from the Carmichael project are also likely to be immaterial or maybe even negative. Adani’s CEO has continuously boasted that the Carmichael Project will be the most autonomous in the world:

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Whereas Adani’s own hand-picked economic expert, Jerome Fahrer from ACIL Allen consulting, told the Queensland Land Court that only 1,464 full-time equivalent jobs would be created by the project. These immaterial job gains must be offset by the job losses that would occur among other Queensland and New South Wales (non-subsidised) coal mines.

Late last year, The Conversation created the below infographic explaining the key impacts expected from Adani’s Carmichael mega coal mine, which is well worth a look:


For mine, the most damning information contained in this infographic is that:

  1. Adani would be allowed to extract unlimited volumes of water from the Great Artesian Basin for 60-years (a projected 12 billion litres a year); and
  2. It would burn 4.49 billion tonnes of carbon dioxite equivalent if/when the mine hits peak production (out of total global fossil fuel emissions of 37 billion in 2017).
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In short, the project is economic and environmental vandalism writ large. Thankfully, it’s chances of proceeding are shrinking fast.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.