Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Australia Strikes a Greentech Deal with the US || Peter Zeihan" video.

Yeah - Australian engineer here. I work in control systems and automation and I've worked in the mining industry for most of the last 20 years building new mines. This is yet ANOTHER example of people in the media who think they know what they are saying about technology. Don't get me wrong on geopolitics Peter is fantastic but when it comes to STEM subjects he needs to improve A LOT. For all the people who think Australia are just producers of Bauxite you are only 1/2 right. The first stage of Aluminium production is to produce Alumina (which is a white powder) using the Bayer Process which is what made the Bayer family rich before they moved in to pharmaceuticals. After producing Alumina it then goes to smelters where they process the Alumina into Aluminium. Its actually a process that needs huge amounts of electricity. The 2 main refineries for that in Australian were at Gladstone in Queensland and Portland in Victoria because both had access to the power needed. One of the main buyers of Australian Alumina is Iceland because they have, via hydro power, enormous amounts of very cheap electricity. How do I know these things? I did a project at Alcan Gove and this was all covered in the inductions. In those years I worked out of Perth and Honeywell (the giant American Company) had their specialist center for minerals in Perth because there's all the Alumina industry south of Perth. I didn't work for Honeywell but knew people who did.
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We actually don't export bauxite we export Alumina (Aluminium Oxide). The first step in producing Aluminium is the extract Alumina from the bauxite. That's fairly high energy process but no where near the next step which is smelting the Alumina into Aluminum as well as making the alloys needed for various applications. We export Alumina to places like Canada and Iceland both of them have access to very cheap hydro.
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@Battleneter Yeah don't remind us about how much money our politicians have in their pockets. What I will say as an engineer is we need to be clear about what type of coal are those mines producing because there's 2 distinct types. As an engineer I hate the fact that none of this is rarely explained so here's the basics. ONE is THERMAL COAL and its only good for burning to generate heat, hence the name "thermal coal." Its what's burned in power stations and other heating applications. Thermal coal is a zombie industry. Its dead but refuses to stay dead and who knows how many times we have to shoot it to finally be rid of it. As I like to put it to the pro-coal clowns "If burning coal is so fantastic then why don't we go back to steam powered trains and have coal powered trucks?" THER OTHER is METALLURGICAL COAL and that's what is used to process iron ore into steel hence the name. What makes it different is the lack of impurities. Its almost pure carbon so when its used in making steel you get good quality steel with few impurities. That's really important when you want to make things like stainless steel and you want bridges not to fall down. Because its got few impurities its also good for other applications like water filtering and for manufacturing carbon fibre to make lighter cars, boats and air planes. The metallurgical coal industry which Australia is a leader in is NOT GOING ANYWHERE because we need steel. If you want wind turbines they need steel towers. If you want public transport then trains, train lines, buses and boats all need steel. Then there's the millions of other products that are made from steel. Yes there's lower emission systems but to replace the worlds entire steel production industry will take years and cost $$ Trillions. These just aren't things we can simply buy from K-Mart or Amazon.
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@moy_moy85 I'll pay that one mate. 👍👍
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@tsubadaikhan6332 Sort of yes sort of no. Like almost everything in Australia's mining game it comes down to 2 companies BHP & Rio Tinto because they are both into iron ore and coal. Of those 2 Rio Tinto has substantial Aluminium assets in the North of Australia at Weipa and Gove, where I have worked on a project. That has since been spun off in to a separate company called Rio Tinto Aluminium. BHP Spun there Aluminium assets of and founded the company South 32 (2015) whose assets are in the far South West of Australia. The company you are thinking of is Alcoa who are 100% American with their headquarters in Pittsburgh and yes they quite big in Australia's Aluminium industry but nothing else so we don't hear as much about them. They own 2 mines and 3 Alumina refineries in the South West of Western Australia in the same region as South32. Alcoa also has some other Australian assets like the smelter at Gladstone. Its the South32 and Alcoa interests in Western Australia that are the main reason Honeywell setup a major mineral processing division in Perth. I never worked for Honeywell but did work with their people a couple of times.
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@idesofmarchUNIAEA No Russia is only number 8. Production & Reserves (kilotonnes) as of 2018 (source Wilipedia) 1Australia 110,000 6,000,000 2 Guinea 82,000 7,400,000 3 China 60,000 1,000,000 4 Brazil 35,000 2,600,000 5 Indonesia 23,000 1,200,000 6 India 22,000 660,000 7Jamaica 7,700 2,000,000 8 Russia 6,100 500,000 9 Kazakhstan 5,800 160,000 10 Vietnam 4,000 3,700,000
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