The report looks at how China's changing demand for coal could impact coal-related assets in Australia, which is a large and growing coal exporter to China.

Aims

This report investigates how China’s demand for coal is changing as a result of environment-related factors, such as regulation, developments in cleaner technologies, local environmental pollution, improving energy efficiency, changing resource landscapes and political activism. The report looks at how this changing demand picture could then translate into impacts on coal and coal-related assets in Australia, which is a large and growing coal exporter to China.

Investors, businesses and communities, as well as state and federal governments in Australia, could be affected by a slowdown in Chinese demand for coal. Changing demand and falling prices could result in ‘stranded assets’, where assets have suffered from unanticipated or premature write-downs, devaluations or conversion to liabilities.

This report aims to provide a greater understanding of the various market dynamics involved, the potential significance of different environment-related factors and an indication of what this could mean for Australian coal assets. It is the first of a series of studies looking at coal and stranded assets internationally.

This report contains five sections. The first section provides some background and methodological guidance. Section two surveys China’s coal market and Australia’s coal exports to China. Section three looks at environmentrelated factors in turn and assesses how each could change China’s coal demand and imports. Section four looks at how a reduction in China’s demand for coal could impact Australian coal assets. The final section provides some guidance so that stakeholders can better manage environment-related risks that have the potential to strand coal assets.