Heinberg: Iowa's future shouldn't depend on fossil fuels

More than 70 percent of Iowa’s electricity comes from coal. That’s a much higher proportion than the national average of 50 percent. Not only does this imply a supersized statewide contribution to global, climate-changing, greenhouse-gas emissions, it also means vulnerability to higher coal prices.

Higher coal prices? The very idea seems ludicrous today, as depressed energy demand has led to a temporary national coal glut. Moreover, we have all been lulled by the mantra that “America has 250 years’ worth of coal.”

But coal is a depleting non-renewable resource, and we have tended to extract the best first. That’s why Britain, formerly the world’s coal powerhouse, has virtually no coal industry left. That’s why nearly all of Pennsylvania’s anthracite is gone. That’s why the energy content per ton of U.S. coal has been declining steadily for well over a decade.

Everyone agrees that America has enormous quantities of coal underground. But how much of that coal can practically be mined? Recent studies by the U.S. Geological Survey and National Academy of Science, among other organizations, suggest that supply problems may come much sooner than we have been led to think; indeed, one German analytic group has forecast that U.S. coal production will peak 20 years from now – well within the operating lifetime of power plants being built today.

Desmoines Register