Peak coal by 2025 say researchers

[jpak]

http://www.energybulletin.net/28287.html

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Executive Summary

When discussing the future availability of fossil energy resources, the conventional wisdom has it that globally there is an abundance of coal which allows for an increasing coal consumption far into the future. This is either regarded as being a good thing enabling the eventual substitution of declining crude oil and natural gas supplies. Or it is seen as a horror scenario leading to catastrophic consequences for the world’s climate. But the discussion rarely focuses on the premise: how much coal is there really?

This paper attempts to give a comprehensive view of global coal resources and past and current coal production based on a critical analysis of available statistics. This analysis is then used to provide an outlook on the possible coal production in the coming decades. The result of the analysis is that there is probably much less coal left to be burnt than most people think.

Data are of poor quality

The first and foremost conclusion from this investigation is that data quality of coal reserves and resources is poor, both on global and national levels. But there is no objective way to determine how reliable the available data actually are. The timeline analyses of data performed here suggest that on a global level the statistics overestimate the reserves and the resources. In the global sum both reserves and resources have been downgraded over the past two decades, in some cases drastically.

For some countries such as Vietnam proven reserves have not been updated for up to 40 years. The data for China were last updated in 1992... According to past experience, it is very likely that the available statistics are biased on the high side and therefore projections based on these data will give an upper boundary of the possible future development.

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[flyingfysh]

1. my grandfather owned a coal mine

But it went bankrupt during the Depression. He told me there was enough coal in Arkansas alone to satisfy the needs of the country for 100 years.