China can still develop new coal at less than A$100 a tonne, but only from its shallow Ordos rung, and that rung has about 25 years left at current output.
Everything below it is deeper, more remote, lower rank or smaller, usually several at once. Capacity under construction will hold the price down for a few years while the resource behind it gets worse.
I expect underlying returns to fall unless the coal price rises in which case substitution happens faster. In the very end producing close to 5 billion tonnes a year of coal in one country means shifting production from one region to another region raising costs and will end badly.
Other regions round the world, Wales, Spain, Germany, Virginia have also seen coal production die away with large social impacts, often 100s of thousands of people have to retool.
China can put that off by reinventing coal but it can’t hide. Increasing production brings the end faster, but for the world the challenge is the increasingly severe outlook for global warming.
