[1] Australia is the world's largest coal exporter, and black coal is Australia's second largest commodity export, worth more than A$24 billion in the financial year ending June 2008, and $46 billion, or nearly double this amount, for the corresponding calendar year ending December.
[3] On 23 August 2013, the Australian Coal Association released a statement that it will be subsumed into the Minerals Council of Australia.
[4] The Australian Coal Association acknowledges that 34 per cent of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions come from burning black and brown coal,[5] primarily for the generation of electricity, but also for steel-making and cement manufacture.
To date, the COAL21 Fund has made commitments of more than $500 million to a number of active and in-development carbon capture and storage research projects.
However, critics of the ACA have argued that "no other economy is as dependent on coal exports as ours, so why would anyone else feel the same imperative to lead?