Let’s take a minute to talk about coal. Although this course focuses on oil and gas, coal remains an important source of energy.
Coal production is currently dominated by China, accounting for over half of all coal production in 2022. Indonesia, the fourth largest country by population, is the second largest producer of coal, followed closely by the United States, Australia and India. Russia also contributes significantly to global coal production.
Countries producing large amounts of coal, also tend to use a significant amount of coal for their energy needs. China is the largest coal consumer at 52% of global share. Notice that Japan is a significant consumer of coal. Most of Japan’s coal is imported from Australia, but also from Indonesia and Russia.
The graphs below focus on the consumption and production of coal over the last thirty-five years. Energy units displayed are called exajoules (EJ). The SI derived unit for energy is the joule and 1 exajoule is equal to 1018 joules.
China and the United States had very similar values of coal production, as well as coal consumption, in 1985. But the two countries clearly began to diverge from each other in the early 1990s (production) and the late 1980s (consumption). China expanded its coal production to service its population’s growing need for energy. Whereas, the United States maintained a fairly steady trend on production and consumption until 2009. After that year, the production and consumption of coal has gradually declined as natural gas replaces coal for electricity generation in the United States.
If we look at the graph of coal consumption over the last several decades, we can see that China is not the only country with an increasing appetite for coal. India, the second most populous country after China, has more than doubled its consumption of coal in the last fifteen years. India’s hunger for energy will likely mean that coal will remain important, but growth of its use will depend on competitive costs for power generation with renewables, such as wind and solar.
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Images: “Rail Cars Loaded with Coal” by Mikhail Sedov via Shutterstock