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Page added on February 23, 2012
Peak? What peak? King coal is coming back!
King Coal may be coming back to save us from peak oil, but condemning us to a worse fate in terms of global warming (image from the National Media Museum)
Recently, Rembrandt Koppelaar has published on the Oil Drum a summary of the world’s trends in energy production. The report tells us that the oil industry is struggling to maintain the present levels of production. It may not have peaked yet, but clearly it can’t resume the past trends of increase. That’s not surprising, it had been foreseen already in 1998 by Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere (link). What’s striking, instead, is the leap forward of coal. The world’s total energy production is not peaking and that’s because of the rapid growth of coal, as you can see here, from Koppelaar’s report:
Coal seemed to have peaked in 1990, but it was an illusion. The growth of coal production during the first decade of the 21st century has been impressive; never seen before in history. So, King Coal is coming back and he may soon reclaim the title of ruler of the energy world that it had lost to crude oil in the 1960s.
We are not seeing anything like a tendency to peak for coal and that, unfortunately, is not good for climate. We can see that from the “other side” of the chemical reaction that sees fossil fuels transformed into carbon dioxide, CO2, whose concentration in the atmosphere is increasing faster in recent times. (the figure below is from “think progress,” see also this previous post).
We cannot say that the burst of carbon dioxide that we are seeing is due to coal alone, but it corresponds well to the spike in coal production and it is surely related to it. The global climate situation seems to be rapidly going out of control and this rapid increase in CO2 concentrations doesn’t bode well for the future. Bowing down our heads again to King Coal may turn out to be the worst choice we ever made in history.
Cassandra’s legacy
5 Comments on "Peak? What peak? King coal is coming back!"
BillT on Thu, 23rd Feb 2012 3:20 am
Will coal run out first or will climate change do us in? The race is on…
And the coal today is much less energy intensive than the coal of the 19th and 20th centuries. It is not much better than wood. Like everything else, we are scraping bottom on natural resources.
MrEnergyCzar on Thu, 23rd Feb 2012 4:58 am
I’m sure the oil companies will replace their oil reserves by buying coal companies. They mostly produce nat. gas now more than oil to maintain their reserves year over year…
MrEnergyCzar
Stephen on Thu, 23rd Feb 2012 7:22 am
The Coal users need to read the recent studies by Energy Watch Group of Germany, University of Texas at Austin, National Academy of Science, and others. Coal is NOT as abundant as people claim, and we don’t have 250 years, or even 100 years of the stuff left. Coal may peak in the USA anytime from now to 2025 according to current estimates. Moreover, the climate change problem and pollution problems of burning coal.
Arthur on Thu, 23rd Feb 2012 8:48 am
The Wikipedia entry for Peak Coal says that the EWG comes with a prediction for peak coal as early as 2020! Heinberg, in his coal book Blackout, mentions the EWG study first and seems to accept a very early date of peak coal.
Kenz300 on Fri, 24th Feb 2012 7:06 pm
Peak coal should be no surprise. We are moving to PEAK everything. We have a food crisis, a water crisis, an oil crisis, an energy crisis, a fish stocks crisis, a rare earths metals crisis, a financial crisis, a jobs crisis and an over population crisis. Every country needs to develop a plan to balance its population, resources and jobs.