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An important article came out in Nature magazine this week, in "The end of cheap coal" authors Richard Heinberg and David Fridley note that "new forecasts suggest that coal reserves will run out faster than many believe. Energy policies relying on cheap coal have no future." (Full article requires subscription; more coverage at Bloomberg.)
Here's the key summary from the article (emphasis mine):
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 coal production may be only years away. One pessimistic study published in 2010 concluded that global energy derived from coal could peak as early as 2011.
Second, global demand is growing rapidly, largely driven by China. Demand rose modestly in the 1990s (0.45% per year), but since 2000 it has been surging at 3.8% per year. China is both the world's biggest producer of coal (40% of global production) and its biggest consumer. Its influence on future coal prices should not be underestimated.
Economic shocks from rising coal prices will be felt by every sector of society. Better data on global coal supplies is long overdue and energy policies that assume a bottomless coal pit need rethinking urgently.
West Virginia is going to run out of coal well before Wyoming and Montana do. When those "cleaner coal" plans get built in West Virginia and we run out of cheap coal, we're going to be stuck with either importing really expensive coal from WY/MT or abandoning those really expensive technology investments. Either way, we're looking at a horrible deal for West Virginia residential and commercial rate-payers. Talk about a jobs and quality of life killer.
What do the study authors recommend? First off, the "USGS should urgently complete a new national coal survey." That's a great idea. Public policy should be firmly grounded in reality, not pie in the sky projections.
Second, "Nations should immediately begin to plan for higher fossil-fuel prices and to make maximum possible investments in energy efficiency and renewable-energy infrastructure." Indeed.
It's not a question of if West Virginia will run out of coal to mine, it is a question of when. The era of cheap coal is over. It's time for West Virginia to use our remaining coal wealth to invest in what comes next.
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