The Death Of Coal? Guess Again - Globally, It's Only Accelerated Since The 1990s

[hatrack]

f you only focused on the United States, you might think coal's days were numbered. The dirtiest of all fossil fuels once provided more than half of America's electricity. That has since dropped to 39 percent, thanks to competition from cheap natural gas, a tireless campaign by the Sierra Club to shutter old coal plants, and strict new air pollution regulations. Add in the Obama administration's upcoming crackdown on carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants, and US coal will keep waning in the future.

But that's not true globally. Far from it. According to data from BP's Statistical Review of Energy, coal consumption has actually been accelerating worldwide since the end of the 1990s:

https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1KVCqJSOcTvfalhwOkAw_ColUOM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3852530/global%20energy%20use%20by%20source%202015.png

EDIT

According to an important study in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we're in the midst of a global "renaissance of coal" that's not confined to just a few countries like China or India. Rather, coal is becoming the energy source of choice for a vast array of poorer and fast-growing countries around the world, particularly in Southeast Asia. "This renaissance of coal," the authors write, "has even accelerated in the last decade."

Why is coal so widely popular? The authors of the PNAS study — Jan Christoph Steckel, Ottmar Edenhofer, and Michael Jakob — argue that coal is often the cheapest energy option in many parts of the world, relative to other sources like oil, gas, nuclear, or renewables. What's interesting is that countries no longer need their own domestic mines to take advantage of coal power. International coal markets have become so robust, with exports surging in mining countries like Australia and Indonesia, that it's become much easier for a wide variety of countries to build coal-fired power plants. (Notably, the authors say, the price of coal itself, rather than the capital costs of building power plants, seems to be the important economic driver here.)

EDIT

http://www.vox.com/2015/7/7/8908179/coal-global-climate-change

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. Our foreign aid needs to be more targeted.

And expanded with a goal of building wind farms and solar farms in developing nations that would otherwise burn coal.

[hatrack]

2. World's biggest coal plant? Why yes, we funded that!

Kusile, South Africa - thanks, World Bank!

[GliderGuider]

3. But we were promised solar-powered ponies!!!!

[happyslug]

4. IS this by ton or BTU?

For example US Coal production continued to INCREASE after 1998, if you go by Coal Ton mined, but if you go by BTU produced by that coal, US production peaked in 1998 and has been declining ever since.

http://energywatchgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/EWG_Report_Coal_10-07-2007ms.pdf

85 percent of global coal reserves are concentrated in six countries (in descending order of reserves): USA, Russia, India, China, Australia, and South Africa. The USA alone holds 30% of all reserves and is the second largest producer. China is by far the largest producer but possesses only half the reserves of the USA. Therefore, the outlook for coal production in these two countries will dominate the future of global coal production (see below).

Largest net coal exporters in descending order are: Australia, Indonesia (40 percent of Australian export), South Africa, Colombia, China, and Russia. These countries account for 85 percent of all exports with Australia providing almost 40 percent of all exports.

The USA, being the second largest producer, already passed peak production of high quality coal in 1990 in the Appalachian and the Illinois basin. Production of subbituminous coal in Wyoming more than compensated for this decline in terms of volume and – according to its stated reserves – this trend can continue for another 10 to 15 years. However, due to the lower energy content of subbituminous coal, US coal production in terms of energy already peaked 5 years ago – it is unclear whether this trend can be reversed. Also specific productivity per miner has been declining since about 2000.

Different classes of coal are also reflected in the statistics. Each coal class has a different range of energy content. Most common is the following classification (IEA 2007):

Anthracite: 30 MJ/kg
Bituminous coal: 18.8–29.3 MJ/kg
Subbituminous coal: 8.3–25 MJ/kg
Lignite: 5.5–14.3 MJ/kg

Most recent increase mining of coal in the US has been in Lignite coal, Anthracite the richest coal in terms of energy peaked production decades ago, Bituminous Coal is in the decline in the US but expanding in China:

This scenario demonstrates that the high growth rates of the last few years must decrease over the next few years and that China will reach maximum production within the next 5–15 years, probably around 2015. The already produced quantities of about 35 billion tons will rise to 113 billion tons (+ 11 billion tons of lignite) until 2050 and finally end at about 120 billion tons (+ 19 billion tons of lignite) around 2100. The steep rise in production of the past few years must be followed by a steep decline after 2020.

The declining coal quality is not only due to a steady shift towards subbituminous and lignite. Also within each class, the quality is declining.

Some previous threads on Coal:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112777738

[pscot]

5. Not a problem

Just burn more of it. There's 540 billion tons in the Powder River basin alone, just lying there waiting to be shipped overseas.