Energy / Coal

• South Africa's Effort to Wean Itself Off Coal Dependency Proving Difficult

  Coal is one of the fossil fuels most responsible for generating greenhouse gases. The effect of such emissions on the atmosphere and the consequences for long-term global warming are a major topic at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting currently underway in Durban, South Africa. Dampening the expectations of South African environmentalists, on 1 December South African Energy Minister Dipuo Peters told journalists that Pretoria could not ignore the fact that South Africa is a coal-rich economy, "nor can we ignore the significant contribution of coal mining industry towards the economy." If one regards energy reserves as good news,…

• Are Coal Power Plants Now too Expensive to Pursue?

  A couple years ago I had lunch with a top executive of one of the state’s leading utilities. Here’s the gist of the question I put to him. “I know you guys want to build a new coal plant nearby here, and I believe you when you say you fully intend to sequester CO2 down the road. But here’s the problem. You can’t even begin building without first raising the price of electricity. We can argue how much – 15, 20, 30 percent – but we all know it’s going to go up.” He nodded. “Well, I’m not an economist,…

• Where Can we Expect Coal Prices to go From Here?

  While most commodities have suffered something of a roller-coaster ride in terms of prices, coal and iron ore have weathered the storm much better. Coal in particular has benefited from natural disasters such as the Queensland floods that removed a significant source of supply from the seaborne supply market earlier this year, and while spot prices for both coking coal and thermal coal have come off, they have not seen the swings of the more volatile base metals. As with iron ore, however, coal demand is very lopsided. In Asia, demand has remained strong and major importers like China have…

• The Price Tag for Clean Coal

  I wanted to get the low down on clean coal to see how clean it really is, so I visited some friends at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The modern day descendent of the Atomic Energy Commission, where I had a student job in the seventies, the leading researcher on laser induced nuclear fission, and the administrator of our atomic weapons stockpile, I figured they’d know. Dirty coal currently supplies us with 50% of our electricity, and total electricity demand is expected to go up 30% by 2030. The industry is spewing out 32 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) a…

• Rio Tinto Looking to Satisfy India’s Growing Hunger for Coal

  The Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto is aiming to provide a coal supply line to the rapidly growing Indian thermal coal market. Indian business daily Business Line, in its report dispatched from Perth, quoted Nik Senapati, Rio Tinto India’s managing director, as saying that his company wants to supply coal to India because India’s coal imports are projected to touch about 200 million tons over next few years. Last year, Rio Tinto supplied three million tons of coking coal to Indian steel companies such as JSW Steel and Tata Steel. A senior government official announced that India’s coal demand will…

• Canada's Environment Ministry Getting Tough with Coal Industry

  Canada’s environment ministry has proposed tougher regulations for coal-fired power plants, but they do not go far enough to help the country achieve its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets, according to an environmental NGO. The rules proposed last week by Environment Canada apply a performance standard to coal-fired units that are either new or have reached the end of their economic life. The standard, which will affect 20 power plants, will require the power stations to achieve parity with the emissions performance of high-efficiency natural gas generation. The regulation is intended to encourage investment in cleaner generation technologies such…

• The Importance of Coal to India's Economy

  India’s coal reserves have been assessed at about 286 billion tons this year, about 3.25 percent higher than the previous year’s 276.8 billion tons, according to a published report. Citing the National Inventory on Indian Coal Resources published by the Geological Survey of India, the Indian newspaper Business Line reported that of this, the Geological Survey estimates proven reserves to be 114 billion tons, or 40 percent of the total reserves. The latest proven reserves represent a 3.6 percent increase over the previous year’s 110 billion tons. According to the report, at current level of production of about 550 million…

• Clean Coal and Underground Coal Gasification

  The reserve limits for coal, for China as well as the rest of the world, can be postponed for several generations if the technology to gasify coal underground can be commercialized. Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) enables the access of deeper coal layers hitherto unavailable through conventional mining. Several modern pilot projects have been successfully completed in recent years and commercial projects are underway. _Rembrandt The writer known as "Rembrandt" provided a very useful article on underground coal gasification at the Oil Drum blog. The images and quotes shown below are all taken from Rembrandt's article. The technology has gained substantial…

• Why Coal Prices Will Soar in the Coming Years

  World energy policy is gripped by a fallacy — the idea that coal is destined to stay cheap for decades to come. This assumption supports investment in ‘clean-coal’ technology and trumps serious efforts to increase energy conservation and develop alternative energy sources. It is an important enough assumption about our energy future that it demands closer examination. There are two reasons to believe that coal prices are likely to soar in the years ahead. First, a spate of recent studies suggests that available, useful coal may be less abundant than has been assumed — indeed that the peak of world…

• Is Coal Actually Saving us from Global Warming?

  In a contradiction that scientists, skeptics, businesses, governments and the media never saw coming, coal emissions may actually be both contributing to global warming and reducing it.  While this may seem like an oxymoron, it turns out that while excess carbon dioxide from coal emissions creates a warming effect in our atmosphere, the sulfur emitted by coal actually cools the atmosphere. While scientists have argued that carbon dioxide emissions will lead to a warming trend, the facts and figures aren’t holding true to their predictions.  2005 and 2010 have been two of the hottest years on record; however, there has…