Coal
IES has a detailed understanding of the Australian coal sector having people who have worked in this sector for many years. This experience includes the mines supplying power stations in all the Australian states, coal exports, cost structures and likely future price outcomes. IES's coal expertise is applied to work associated with electricity market studies and in particular, future electricity price outcomes and power station positions.
IES has an extensive database of the domestic Australian coal market, with emphasis on mines that supply the electricity generation sector. Our database has details on all mines supplying the coal-fired generation sector. Details on the expected life of mine, fuel contracts, mine cost breakdown, transport costs and coal quality for the domestic mines are also an important component of the database. This database was recently used as the basis for a fuel cost review for AEMO of all NEM coal-fired generators. The fuel cost review was conducted under a range of economic and environmental (carbon price) scenarios, the fuel cost projections were run for a twenty year period out to 2030/31.
Apart from the Australian domestic coal market IES regularly conducts electricity market studies for Asian countries where each country’s coal-fired generation sector is examined. One overseas project of particular note was completed by IES in 2008 for AusAID which required a detailed examination of all aspects of the energy and electricity industries of the sixteen East Asian Summit countries (which includes China, India and Japan among many others), the coal industries (or the coal import needs) of all sixteen countries were examined in detail.