2022 Predictions for the Coal Industry
Written by Matthew McKean, CEO and co-founder of Frontieras North America (LinkedIn)
The past 24 months have been a whirlwind to say the least.
Australia kicked off 2020 with news of massive wildfires. The news circulated the globe, and everyone believed the devastating wildfires would be the biggest story of the year.
We all now know that was the tip of the iceberg. Then came COVID-19, followed by the Delta variant and now of course the Omicron variant.
COVID-19 has dominated the news and altered many aspects of our lives that we once took for granted, including family gatherings, in-person meetings, the production and delivery of goods, etc. As COVID-19 circulated the globe, it provided a stage for America’s government and corporations to show their strength, leadership and ingenuity in creating and distributing a vaccine in record time.
For instance, the U.S. government aligned with the health industry to deploy the National Guard to support the treatment and rollout of the vaccine. Corporations, understanding the impact of COVID-19, provided financial and technological support to streamline industries that were poised to play a key role in helping address the outbreak (i.e. mass production of ventilators).
Despite America’s best efforts, COVID-19 became a global pandemic, placed the U.S. economy on the brink and, for the foreseeable future, changed our daily lives. With the Omicron variant, we are once again seeing countries close their borders, airlines canceling flights by the thousands, healthcare systems being overrun and countless other obstacles impacting everyone’s lives.
As we roll forward into 2022, the data indicates there’s another global crisis occurring - the state of energy in the U.S. market and abroad. Energy provides clean water, heat, the production of daily goods, and the ability to feed our communities. Energy is at the heart of what we do, the innovation that we create and how we advance as a society.
Like the pandemic, the cure for our burgeoning energy crisis has become political. The conversations within the mainstream media have focused on the COP29, CO2 emissions, and embracing energy solutions that cannot scale and are impractical from a cost perspective.
While the energy arguments are waged in the media, countries are looking to deliver reliable and cost-effective energy as efficiently as possible. I’ve outlined the top trends that we at Frontieras believe will dominate the energy sector over the next 12 months.
Our Top Predictions for 2022
Commodity Crisis: Supply side issues, Zero Carbon policies and the ongoing transition to a lower carbon economy have the oil and natural gas producers reluctant to spend money on new projects. This hesitation combined with a number of outside factors, including inflation, supply-constrained physical markets, commodity-intensive infrastructure spending and rising production costs will accelerate a commodity crisis in 2022.
Spiking Energy Prices: Energy prices are rising rapidly in the U.S. and abroad. Other parts of the world (India, Asia, Germany and the UK) are recognizing their energy shortfalls and have ramped up coal production to meet the rising energy demands that are outpacing the output of solar initiatives.
Populist uprising against "Carbon neutral”: People will not accept freezing to death and facing food shortages. With the failure of wind and solar to provide stable and low-cost energy, we are seeing an uprising to the popular belief that these technologies will be the gateway to our future energy needs. to reassess it low carbon economy.
New Technologies: We anticipate that major technological advancements will be made across specific parts of the energy sector, including hydrocarbons. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), coal is expected to play a large part in the world’s economic recovery from the pandemic.
As the CEO and co-founder of Frontieras North America, I believe we’re on the verge of a cultural shift that is not going to accept the continued spending and subsidizing of technologies that have proven ineffective to meet the needs of a society continuing to evolve.
Frontieras, a subsidiary of Frontier Applied Sciences, has spent the last 10 years developing a technology that reimagines the processing of hydrocarbons within a broader energy market. Specifically focused on efficiently processing fossil fuels, Frontieras maximizes the energy output and produced yields of each form including solids, liquids and gas. Frontieras and its Solid Carbon Fractionation technology are poised to redefine the energy market and provide a way for hydrocarbons to be used as a core component of our society’s energy creation. Over the next 12 months, we will be making a series of announcements that will illustrate our ability to execute on the company strategy. To learn more, visit us at www.frontieras.com