How Much Coal Is Really in Them Thar Hills?

They used to say that “coal is king.” Today maybe it’s “‘clean coal’ is king.” But is there enough in the ground for coal to keep its crown?

The accepted wisdom among energy wonks is that oodles of coal remain to be mined and burned. How much is oodles? Consider two points:


* Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, we have added about 300 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2) as a result of burning fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal);

* Conventional estimates of the remaining amount of recoverable coal typically hover at about 1,000 billion tons of carbon — more than three times the carbon we have burned from all fossil fuels over the past almost 200 years.

Combine the second point above with the low cost of generating electricity from coal and it’s easy to understand why many proclaim that “coal is king.”

Huffington Post