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While Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade figures revealed Australia’s 2013-14 coal exports to India were worth just under $5 billion, thermal coal was a small but growing component.

Hogan noted in his report The life-saving potential of coal, issued last month, that if Queensland’s GVK Hancock and the Adani projects alone could be brought to production, Australia could potentially increase its supply of thermal coal to India by at least 120 million tonnes per year.

This much coal would allow more than 82 million people in India to have access to a regular and reliable annual supply of electricity – and this figure could easily be supplemented by Australian coal from other locations or by additional production, Hogan added.

He said these benefits were quite separate to the thousands of jobs in mine construction and operation they would generate, providing tens-of-billions of dollars of export revenue for Australia and driving the development of new rail, road and port infrastructure in Australia’s north.

“While solar and wind power may very well have a place in future world energy supply, not even the most earnest activist can change the laws of physics and force solar power to work at night or in cloudy weather, wind power to work in calm conditions, or hydroelectric power to work in times of drought or in areas without large rivers or mountains,” Hogan said.

“In the absence of large scale battery power, the chances of renewables replacing fossil fuels in the near future are unlikely.

“While there will be the occasional good days for wind and solar, and while we can be sure that renewable energy activists will pump-up their occasional success, electricity grids in industrial nations will continue to depend on fossil fuels, with those countries that have made significant investment in renewable systems still needing fossil fuels to back them up.

“Two metrics that don’t currently get a lot of attention in the energy debate are system reliability, and the morality of ensuring that people in the developing world have the same opportunities for a secure and rewarding life that we enjoy in nations like Australia.

“The things we take for granted in Australia – that our household heating and cooling works when we need it, that our meat and milk is properly refrigerated, that our stoves and ovens don’t release polluted smoke into our kitchen, and even that our televisions and lights are always available for use and mobiles can always be charged – are just not the reality in many other countries.

“It is just as important to people in India and the developing world as it is to people in Australia that their electricity system is reliable and affordable.

“The morality of seeking to deny other countries the privileges that we enjoy here, when we have the ability to help out, is deeply suspect.”

Electricity networks existed as a means to provide people with reliable and affordable power, and coal-fired power stations typically had lower operation and maintenance costs and lasted at least twice as long as solar and wind farms, Hogan noted.

However, while the Indian government, like China’s, was desperately trying to pursue policies to provide a higher standard of living for its people, Hogan warned that coal activists in Australia, as they had done with increasing success in the US, were “working to choke off their supply of coal”.

“The danger of the current anti-fossil fuel campaign, given its underlying ideological motivation, is that this systemic need for electricity network reliability and affordability will be permanently compromised,” Hogan said.

“If the activists’ war against coal were to be won, then gas and oil companies, and the people whose lives depend on them, will be the next main target.

“Australians should be standing up to this political intimidation, actively considering how we would like being denied energy reliability, and support the right of Australian mining companies to sell their product – and continue to pay significant taxes for doing so – thereby improving the lives of millions of people in developing nations.”