Wait, it’s hard to take you seriously if you think India pays below market rate for coal from Australia. Is that really your stance or am I misreading that?
They have domestic production that accounts for a significant portion of domestic electricity generation that is bought at market value and then sold commercially through government supported subsidy to help their economic needs.
This isn’t a question of “they’re getting it for cheap because of subsidies” - if indeed that’s what you’re saying, it’s a rather uninformed position on the matter.
Also, I don’t care what the new German government “intends” to do. The old one “intended” to turn off the bulk of their Nuclear sources leading to coal use surging at peak (which is happening all the more frequently now with the winter energy mix being thrown off)
You seem to have a stock position for increasing the cost of dirty sources without a care for what compels economies to use them in the first place. That is precisely the point I’m trying to get you to see. They aren’t used one dimensionally because they’re dirty and no one has prioritized clean energy sources yet, but because they are necessary and the alternatives don’t fit the bill for the need of the hour.
Adding a carbon tax in this context is a very arrogant way of saying “Fuck your needs, if you have to pay more, you’ll learn to live with less”
When the point is we want to innovate so we get the economic value that modern technology such as SMRs produce without needing to subject a billion people to continue living with powercuts that stretch hours a day because the “civilized” world thinks the pollution from them wanting a better life is too dangerous for the world.