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A few days after my post on The Chinese Coal Monster was published I received an email from Jean Laherrere with the following charts and some comments: One of the puzzles addressed in the original post was the fact that BP data showed Chinese production and consumption to be broadly in balance making it difficult to explain reports of surging coal imports. Jean's main point is that EIA data provides a different picture to that provided by BP and that the BP data are likely wrong. It is very important to know that China is importing much more than in the past.
The Oil Drum: Europe | The Chinese Coal Monster - a comment from Jean Laherrere
I've heard it many times before. Remarkable growth in Asia is leading to big increases in coal consumption and carbon-dioxide emissions. But I didn't have a good sense of just how big that change has been until I saw this graphic from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Asia's coal use was smaller than Europe's in 1980. Now it dwarfs coal consumption even in North America, the world's second-largest consumer.
Visualizing Asian Energy Consumption - Technology Review
There are many unfortunate outcomes to Peak Oil . One of the more serious is the world’s transition back to coal. Expensive BTU from crude oil has influenced the energy adoption pathway of the Developing World for ten years now, pushing the five billion people in the Non-OECD towards coal. My work has documented this shift for some time.
Coal's Terrible Forecast | Gregor.us
Year 2012 is shaping up to be another year when the developments in the Pacific Basin will be the key determinants of coal demand. With US demand muted by low gas prices and EU demand kept in check by expansion in renewable generation and poor macroeconomic prospects, Asia will be the sole source of market impetus, says Barcalys in a report. Asia is something of a mixed bag for the market, with 2012 possibly heralding the beginning of a period which sees Chinese import demand starts to fall. The issue is not really a lack of incremental demand as the robust build out of coal-fired generation continues apace with another 300 GW being scheduled to be commissioned in the period between 2011 and 2015 – adding around 570 mt of demand by 2015. “We would expect overall lower prices in 2012 for all of the major coal benchmarks with API2 forecast to average 115 $/t, API4 111 $/t and Newcastle 120 $/t” the report notes.
Coal demand: Asian juggernaut continues to roll | www.commodityonline.com | 3
Why America needs to move beyond coal: Five economic indicators | Energy Bulletin
Coal still plays a dominant role in the U.S. energy mix, accounting for almost 45% of American electricity production. But the economics of coal continue to change, making the resource look far less attractive today than it once was. Researchers, journalists and activist groups have been sounding the alarm about “Peak Coal” in recent years. A 2010 paper in the journal Energy concluded that the global coal industry had reached the limit to what it could technically and economically exploit. Another 2009 analysis from Clean Energy Action based on US Geological Survey data suggested showed that available coal reserves were not as abundant as widely thought:
Going underground: Coal ignited 1400-meters underground delivers a clean-burning blend of carbon monoxide, methane and hydrogen at a demonstration site in Alberta. China is pushing forward with a new strategy for expanding access to coal energy that could also reduce its environmental impact: turning coal into clean-burning gases in the ground. At a U.K.-Chinese summit in Beijing late last month that included British prime minister David Cameron and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, a $1.5-billion commercial partnership was launched to gasify six million tons of buried coal per year and generate 1,000 megawatts of power.
Exploiting China's Coal While It's Still Underground - Technology Review
Coal shortage looms amidst power shortage in China | 11 May 2011 | www.commodityonline.com | 3
Last Updated : 11 May 2011 at 20:00 IST SHANGHAI (Commodity Online): China, the largest consumer of energy, is scrambling for energy to keep its mammoth economic engine from slowing down in the face of falling coal supplies, which remains to be the corner stone of power generation in the country. Early advent of summer in China has turned the situation seemingly direr in combination with the inflation in the region. The hostile winter that preceded the prevalent weather is known to have caused the shortage of coal in China. Chinese power shortages are not uncommon during the summers, but what distinguishes it this time is that it has commenced earlier than usual and at a time when inflation seems to be weighing the economy down.Energy Outlook
The Beginning of the End for Coal? I saw in Tuesday's Washington Post that the EPA was ready to issue its proposed rules for CO2 emissions from new power plants. When finalized, these rules would apply to facilities larger than 25 MW that begin construction more than a year hence. As the Post notes, the chosen CO2 emissions limit of 1,000 lb. per gross Megawatt-hour (MWh) generated would make it virtually impossible for a new conventional coal-fired generating plant to comply with this requirement. That looks like another positive for natural gas, which is coal's nearest competitor today.
The Oil Drum | Future Coal Supplies - More, Not Less!
The most extreme of the positions on the imminent coal peak is that of Tad Patzek and Greg Croft. (Energy, Volume 35, Issue 8, August 2010, Pages 3109-3122) In that paper the authors had inserted a predictive graph on coal energy production rate, as follows: From Patzek and Croft As you may note, this suggests that we are right at that cusp of peak production and it is all downhill from here. With the major sources of energy for the planet currently coming from coal and oil, and with the recent comments both from the IEA and the Joint Services Command about the peaking of oil, that would transfer a lot of the load to natural gas, which is the third major source, according to the IEA. (And it should be noted that P&C did include the following from the IEA in their presentation.My latest column on Scitizen entitled " Global Coal Supplies: It Might Be Worse Than Anyone Thinks " has now been posted. Here is the teaser:
Global coal supplies: It might be worse than anyone thinks
If you want to whip an energy and climate geek into a frenzy, there are a few go-to topics, the two most prominent being nuclear power and coal. A couple of interesting items appeared in Google Reader today regarding coal that I thought were definitely worth your time. First is The Future Of Coal Power Will Require Hard Choices : Next Monday, governments of some of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases are scheduled to announce how much they’ll limit the emissions that warm the planet.
The Cost of Energy » Blog Archive » Coal’s future
Like many others, Bernstein Research analyst Hugh Wynne thinks the election of Scott Brown to a Massachusetts Senate seat last week is a death knell for cap-and-trade legislation, at least under this administration (we don’t necessarily agree with this assessment, but more about that later). And like others, he points to new EPA regulations as being an alternative source of curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Only instead of the EPA’s CO2 endangerment finding, it’s the proposed tightening of sulphur dioxide emissions rules that Wynne says could affect US coal-fired power plants so much that US demand for coal goes into ‘secular decline’.
The death of US coal | FT Energy Source | FT.com
Published: Feb. 4, 2010 at 1:10 PM JAKARTA, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- Indonesia, the world's third-largest coal exporter, plans to gradually cease its coal exports to save for its future needs, says a government official. The National Energy Board, or DEN, is now putting together such a recommendation to be submitted to the government this month, state-owned news agency ANTARA reports.
Indonesia considers coal export slowdown - UPI.com
Coal industry punk'd by hilarious spoof website | Energy Bulletin
This site offers free asthma inhalers but still claims that coal is the safest form of energy. Image: coalcares.org. "Why free inhalers? Because COAL CARES.Coal, Energy Demand, and Sovereign Debt -- Seeking Alpha
It was the best of times for the developing world, and the worst of times for the developed world. In the developing world, they built savings. In the developed world, they groaned and sagged under the weight of debt.china coal