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A synopsis of the Nature article:
The idea that coal is cheap and plentiful drives much thinking about future world energy consumption. It can explain the resistance of the United States and China to carbon-cutting policies — both countries have lots of coal, and they don’t plan to stop using it anytime soon. But is it a reasonable assumption? Richard Heinberg and David Fridley argue in this week’s Nature that coal prices are likely to start rising much sooner than everyone thinks — perhaps by the end of this decade.
This prediction is based on two observations. First, several recent studies suggest that high-quality accessible coal reserves will run out much sooner than predicted by official forecasts from the main coal-producing countries. Second, global demand is growing rapidly, mainly driven by China. China is both the world’s biggest producer of coal and its biggest consumer. “Its influence on future coal prices should not be underestimated,” say the authors.
http://www.energybulletin.net/storie...nature-journal
During the oil price spike two years ago, even though coal prices also shot up, there was no change in supply because they were already producing flat out, and time lags of years would have been necessary to ramp up production.
I hadn't realized that Pennsylvania had gone to near zero coal production already.
This is what Pennsylvania oil production looked like.
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/us/pa/
The idea that coal is cheap and plentiful drives much thinking about future world energy consumption. It can explain the resistance of the United States and China to carbon-cutting policies — both countries have lots of coal, and they don’t plan to stop using it anytime soon. But is it a reasonable assumption? Richard Heinberg and David Fridley argue in this week’s Nature that coal prices are likely to start rising much sooner than everyone thinks — perhaps by the end of this decade.
This prediction is based on two observations. First, several recent studies suggest that high-quality accessible coal reserves will run out much sooner than predicted by official forecasts from the main coal-producing countries. Second, global demand is growing rapidly, mainly driven by China. China is both the world’s biggest producer of coal and its biggest consumer. “Its influence on future coal prices should not be underestimated,” say the authors.
http://www.energybulletin.net/storie...nature-journal
During the oil price spike two years ago, even though coal prices also shot up, there was no change in supply because they were already producing flat out, and time lags of years would have been necessary to ramp up production.
I hadn't realized that Pennsylvania had gone to near zero coal production already.
This is what Pennsylvania oil production looked like.
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/us/pa/
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