<Refining 201: The Assay EssayThe Oil DrumWhy oil costs over $120 per barrel>

190 comments on Richard Heinberg: Coal in the United States

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

BrianT on May 29, 2008 - 8:50am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Great article-excellent overview of the situation.

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
kenny on May 29, 2008 - 10:03am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Coal powered the industrial revolution, and it will be the energy end game for industrial civilization as well. We'll know we're close to rock bottom, literally, when we start burning oil shale in place of coal to keep the lights on.

I've been arguing since the Hirsch report came out that the inevitable "stampede to coal" is a fantasy. Poor ugly, dirty coal can't possibly simultaneously power industry for a growing population, keep the lights on, heat our homes when natural gas supplies dwindle and power our electric cars and trucks when oil imports fall to zero (or be converted to synthetic fuel for internal combustion engines).

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
BrianT on May 29, 2008 - 10:08am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Your two statements are contradictory- I think you mean there will be a stampede but it won't solve anything.

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
kenny on May 29, 2008 - 10:17am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Sorry, I'm not much of a writer. Yes, that's what I meant. The stampede will happen, but coal is not an answer for peak oil mitigation, for one thing because the problem isn't peak oil but rather peak resources and population overshoot.

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Heading Out on May 29, 2008 - 12:25pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

You have to remember that different fuels fit into different segments of the energy use pie. The immediate problem that we usually discuss here is the coming gap between supply and demand at a reasonable price, of oil and natural gas. They are liquid fuels and most of their use is in transportation.

In contrast most coal is used to generate electricity and, as I point out as part of a comment below, the public is not amenable to significant increase in that price. Which is a problem since it is largely in displacing coal that solar and wind have the potential. None of the three has a realistic chance of providing significant volumes (by which I mean over a million barrels a day) of liquid fuel in the next 20 years.

In a way coal is, however, like oil, in the latter case you only produce as much as the refineries can handle, in the same way with coal, there is not much point in producing more coal than the power stations can handle, since you can't sell it.

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Sterling on May 30, 2008 - 11:53am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Which is a problem since it is largely in displacing coal that solar and wind have the potential.

If only that were true. Unfortunately, without electricity storage or a shift away from a power on demand system, solar and wind will not displace the baseload parts of the existing generation system (e.g. coal and nuclear), they will displace the part that supplies the variable demand that results from weather and time of day demand variations (e.g. gas and hydro). That is why solar and wind are currently limited to about 20% of the generation mix and why building new nuclear is so important.

0
Comments can no longer be added to this story.