After the opposition Labor party suffered heavy losses in the coal-mining regions during Saturday’s Australian federal elections, the Carmichael project looks to be getting closer than ever to approval.

In the view of the government’s resources minister Matt Canavan, the pit being developed by Adani Mining Pty, a unit of Gautam Adani’s business empire, is all systems go:

That is a rarely discussed problem with this, though. The numbers on Carmichael don’t stack up and haven’t for most of the past decade, despite the mine becoming a high-profile proxy for broader fights over fossil fuels among politicians, lobbyists and environmentalists.

The most important factor in determining coal pricing is its energy content. In the case of Carmichael, we have known since Adani’s initial regulatory applications in 2010 that this is around 20.7 gigajoules per ton or 4,950 kilocalories per kilogram.

This is an average for the whole reserve, and Adani’s backers have consistently suggested the figure will be higher. Most mine projects can produce a small amount of higher-energy product at the expense of the bulk of production. Under sustained questioning by Queensland’s state parliament in March, Adani Australia’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Lucas Dow would not be more precise than to offer a range of 4,800 kcal to 5,600 kcal.

That is roughly in line with the stuff sold by Indonesia’s PT Adaro Energy Tbk. At present, Adaro makes about $66 of revenue per metric ton of coal sold, a number that is consistent with the charts published in its investor materials. Put that together with the 10 million tons per annum (mtpa) output from the first stage at Carmichael, and you have something like $660 million of annual revenue.

QCoal Pty’s Byerwen coal project is a 10 mtpa mine adjacent to existing coal infrastructure in Queensland's Bowen Basin with costs estimated at A$1.8 billion; the China Stone project and Alpha Coal project in the Galilee were targeting about A$6.8 billion for 38 mtpa and 30 mtpa respectively for mine development.

Next, subtract the costs of blasting, shovelling, washing, blending and loading the coal. At BHP Group Ltd’s lean Mount Arthur mine north of Sydney, cash costs have averaged about $48 over the past 18 months, toward the bottom end for Australian coal mines: Adjusting that for the cost of transporting the coal to port on third-party networks comes to about $50 a ton of operating costs, or $500 million for the whole project, enough to leave $160 million of gross profit (Adani in January estimated a figure of $39 a ton at port, which seems implausibly low).

Aurizon Holdings Ltd, Australia’s biggest coal rail operator, charges A$38.10 ($26.20) per 1,000 net ton kilometres and Carmichael’s soot would need to travel for about 200 kilometres over its lines, compared with 130 kilometres to port for Mount Arthur.

Then consider the cost of building the mine and a separate 200 kilometre railway line from Queensland’s Galilee Basin, where its situated. Comparable projects suggest about A$1.8 billion ($1.24 billion) for the mine. This is pretty much in line with figures of A$2 billion cited in news reports. The railway would likely be another A$1 billion, for a total $1.9 billion capital project.

A second stage would bring it to 27.5 mtpa and beyond that, it was originally envisaged producing as much as 60 mtpa.

To get an idea of what that would cost to fund with debt, look at bonds for Adani’s Abbot Point terminal, a coal export port in northern Queensland. They are currently yielding 6.88 per cent, which would mean $131 million a year of interest costs. On top of that you have to depreciate the asset and amortize the debt itself; let’s assume you depreciate over 30 years and amortize over 10 and the result is $250 million.

Add all that together and Adani is losing $220 million a year. It would cost about $88 to produce a ton of coal that would sell for $66 on the open market. Those challenging numbers (rather than pressure from environmentalists) look like the best explanation for why banks have refused to lend to Carmichael. Adani has promised to fund the project from its own balance sheet.

To some extent we can leave debt costs aside if Adani does self-fund. Even then, though, the numbers fail to stack up: On the extremely generous assumption that Adani can fund it with cash alone and bear no finance costs, net operating profit after tax would still amount to $70 million a 3.7 per cent return on $1.9 billion of invested capital. Any return below about eight per cent represents economic losses; Adani could make twice as much buying Indian 10-year government bonds.

All this raises the question of why everyone is so adamant that this project is going ahead.

For Australia’s Coalition government, the attractions are obvious: Carmichael is a potent wedge issue that may have just helped swing last weekends federal election in its favour. For environmentalists, too, the prospect of an operating Adani mine represents a totemic fund-raising and rallying opportunity. The Labor party, meanwhile, can’t risk alienating the coal industry by declaring that this emperor has no clothes.

What of Adani itself? We have speculated in the past that keeping the project on life support helps avoid a painful billion-dollar write-down; perhaps a sufficient level of taxpayer subsidy might be enough to salvage something from the wreckage.

The company has argued that coal market prices don’t matter because it intends to burn the product in its own generators. But that doesn’t sidestep basic economics: Adani Power Ltd. has lost an aggregate Rs 10,700 crore ($1.5 billion) over the past decade, and would likely be doing even worse if it were buying overpriced coal from Carmichael.

Yet the belief that only environmentalists and obstructionist politicians are holding Carmichael back continues to shamble on. Comparable projects like Glencore Plcs Wandoan have been mothballed for years.

As we have argued, investors seem to be fleeing coal finance as the economics get increasingly challenging. Yet away from the spotlight, Carmichael-scale mines with higher-quality coal and access to existing infrastructure such as MACH Energy Australia Pty’s Mount Pleasant and Whitehaven Coal Ltd.s Vickery are quietly coming online to replace production declines elsewhere.

That’s not why Carmichael is a lightning rod, though. Opening up a whole new coal basin like the Galilee represents a very different image for the future of coal than adding niche projects suggesting coal power isn’t being phased out, potentially sooner than expected (as BHP suggested this week)but on the brink of a bright new future. Letting go of that pipe dream is proving remarkably painful.

The writer is a opinion-columnist with Bloomberg

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