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How Long Will Coal Last?
NPG President Donald Mann Comments: An article titled Coal's Energy Potential Is an Engineering Challenge Now appeared in the May 1, 2007 edition of The New York Times. In it, Mark Gray, vice president for engineering services at American Electric Power was quoted as saying, "We have enough coal for anywhere from 200 to 450 years."
Mr. Gray failed to explain that the length of time any resource, including coal, will last is even more dependent on the rate of growth of production per year than it is on the amount of coal remaining to be mined.
The reason why that is true is explained in an important paper written by Dr. Albert A. Bartlett, Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, titled Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis. We highly recommend that it be read carefully in its entirety.
It is important to understand what exponential growth is. As explained in Dr. Bartlett's paper, when a quantity such as the rate of production of a resource grows at a fixed percent a year, the growth is exponential. When consumption is rising exponentially, a doubling of the remaining resource results in only a small increase in the life expectancy of the resource! That, to me, is an absolutely astonishing fact.
Table IX(shown below) from Dr. Bartlett's paper shows lifetime in years, or EET (exponential expiration time) for U.S. coal, and vividly illustrates the impact of different rates of annual production on the lifetime of a given resource. For example, if the rate of growth of coal production were five percent per year, the resource would last only about half the time it would last if the rate of growth were two percent! That is an amazing difference.
Lifetime in years of United States coal (EET). The lifetime (EET) in years of U.S. coal reserves (both the high and low estimate of the U.S.G.S.) are shown for several rates of growth of production from the 1972 level of 0.5 (x109) metric tons per year.
High Estimate (yr)
Low Estimate (yr)
As demand for energy continues to increase, and as oil production peaks and begins to decline, as many experts believe it will do within the next decade at most, coal will be called on to supply more and more energy.
In his NPG Forum paper dated 2004, titled The End of Fossil Fuels, Part 1. How Long the Twilight?, Lindsey Grant writes, "The WEC (World Energy Council) 'reserve/production ratio' for coal reserves for six of the seven leading countries (except China) comes out to over 200 years' supply, but that calculation is nearly meaningless, both for the reasons I cited in the petroleum discussion and because the demand for coal will skyrocket. It provides just 27 percent of world fossil fuel consumption now, it will be called on to provide much of the other 73 percent as oil and gas wind down."
The DOE/EIA puts world reserves of coal at 1018 billion tons (Grant). It also projects total world consumption in 2030 of 10,561 million short tons, with an annual 2.5 percent growth rate between 1990 and 2030. If that projected 2030 consumption were to remain steady (which is highly unlikely) the resource would be consumed in less than 100 years!
The most important task before us is clear. To increase production of energy from finite resources (the only kind we have on our finite planet) sufficiently to meet ever growing demand is simply an impossibility. If we persist in our efforts to do so we will destroy not only our environment but our standard of living along with it. To balance energy supply and demand we need, not to increase supply, but to reduce demand to a sustainable level that can be met indefinitely with renewable energy.
That can only be achieved with a far smaller U.S. and world population. We urgently need a drastic (although necessarily gradual) reduction in U.S. and world population until our numbers can eventually be stabilized at a level that would be sustainable indefinitely, in a sound and healthy environment, with an adequate standard of living for all. We, and many scientists, estimate that level to be not more than 150 million for the United States, and two billion for the world.
To achieve what is urgently required, a negative rate of population growth during an interim period of population reduction, we need, in all countries in the world, a sub-replacement fertility rate (a replacement level fertility rate is roughly 2.1 children per woman on average). A sub-replacement fertility rate has already been achieved in many countries. It needs now to be achieved by all, and such a goal should be reachable by a mix of rewards and non-coercive penalties in order to reduce desired family size to not more than two children.
Suggested reading:
1.NPG, A Proposed National Population Policy. February. 2006
2.The Steady-State Economy: What It Is, Why We Need It. March 2005
3.Land, Water and Energy Versus The Ideal U.S. Population. January 2005
4. The End of Fossil Fuels, Part 1. How Long the Twilight? 2004
5. The Cairo Conference on Population and Development. August 1994
6. The Two Child Family. May 1994
7 .The New American Century. May 2004
8. A No-Growth, Steady-State Economy Must Be Our Goal. 2002
9 . An Essay on a Sustainable Economy. 1999
