Coal use Increases will have its costs

I've been involved with a documentary called Asleep In America since 2004. In my research and travels for this film I've learned much about geopolitics, energy & economics.

The United States has been well endowed with natural resource: gold, water, farmland, forests, oil, gas and coal. It's what has allowed the US to rise to a power. In regards to coal, we sit on the largest reserve on the planet. Whether it would be right or safe to use it all does not enter economic considerations for future supply/demand forecasts for energy. Which is why I tend to oppose the purely business-minded mode of thinking.

One thing to keep in mind when it comes to talking about hydrocarbon resources is that currently we mainly use coal for electrical generation. Since natural gas has gone into decline, the trend since 2002, in the US, has been to replace natural gas with coal. About 50% of our electricity comes from coal burning plants.

As hydrocarbons go, coal is the bottom of the chain. It's the dirtiest, least efficient, and most toxic substance we mine & burn in mass quantity.

So with $100/barrel oil right around the corner, keep in mind that to speak of oil in the US is to speak of liquid fuels. 75% of oil use in America is for liquid fuel, not electricity. And to speak of coal is to speak of generating electricity, not making liquid fuel. CTL (Coal-to-Liquid) technology exists, but not in any way to replace oil as a liquid fuels source. And again, the mining, processing and burning of coal is an environmental catastrophe in the making.


I came across this article and wanted to post it here as a note worthy current event.
Link to article on Energy Bulletin:

Gore Nightmare Wins as Europe Pays to Ship U.S. Coal
Christopher Martin, Bloomberg
Now that the price of coal is at a historic low relative to oil, there's no stopping consumers and producers alike from embracing Al Gore's nightmare.

A ton of U.S. coal is so cheap at about $47 that European utilities will pay $50 to ship it across the Atlantic, according to Galbraith's Ltd., a 263-year-old London shipbroker. While oil and coal cost the same as recently as 1998, West Texas Intermediate crude is five times more expensive after climbing to a record $96.24 on Nov. 1.

Peabody Energy Corp., Consol Energy Inc. and Arch Coal Inc., the three biggest U.S. coal companies, forecast the largest increase in exports in 20 years, degrading the call for a moratorium on coal plants by former U.S. Vice President and this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore. Coal use worldwide has grown 27 percent since 2002, three times faster than crude, said BP Plc. U.S. East Coast coal has risen 71 percent, while oil tripled on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

``Coal is by far the cheapest fuel because there's no price on how much damage it causes,'' said John Holdren, a Harvard University professor of environmental science and director of the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts
(5 November 2007)