An excellent Editorial putting coal in context of how much is left was printed on August 16 by the Roanoke Times. The editorial cites Richard Heinberg’s recently published book, Blackout (intro and review here) which as the editorial puts it, “lays out the case that America’s coal reserves are far shallower than thought.” The Editorial also goes on to mention a recently completed United States Geological Survey study that says basically the same thing. Since they don’t provide a link to an article explaining this momentous study I thought it would be prudent to provide it here.

This summer, both the USGS and Richard Heinberg came to very similar conclusions when they looked at how much coal we actually have in Appalachia and the US respectively. Heinberg says the data shows that coal production will peak and begin declining in 20 years and the USGS says production may peak in Appalachia and begin declining in ten.

If you are not familiar with what a peak means then you should know that the problems don’t begin when a resource runs out but when production can no longer meet demand (as in not enough gas for all the cars, or not enough coal to power every town it used to). This happens when we have used around half of the resource. Resource extraction, whether its coal, oil or whatever, generally follows a bell curve.  The halfway point is at the top of the bell curve and is the point when production is at the highest it ever has been, or ever will be.

This happened with oil in the US in the early seventies and since then we have had continually declining production of domestic oil and have had to purchase an increasing amount from overseas. Lucky for us, our ‘friends’ in the Middle East and South America have way more oil than us. Unfortunately the outlook for foreign coal imports is not so peachy.

What USGS is saying about Appalachia and Heingberg are saying about the country is that we will reach this peak with coal, the resource that produces nearly 45% of our electricity, in 20 years or less. We don’t have much time to develop other forms of producing energy before our domestic coal production will never again be able to meet demand. This bodes the worst for Central and Southern Appalachia where many counties’ economies rely entirely on coal production, for better or worse, to stay afloat.

This means we need to find alternative sources of electricity production for the entire nation, and quick, and we need to find alternative economic development for the coal producing counties of Appalachia, like yesterday.

This makes me wonder, should we be building more coal plants?

Notable quotes from the Editorial:

“Coal won’t be around forever. The time is now to start weaning the U.S. from its dependence.”

“No matter how you look at it, coal is going to become a far more expensive energy source. If CSS can even be developed and implemented on the mammoth scale necessary to make a difference in carbon emissions, that won’t happen until about the time we reach peak coal.”

Read the full editorial here: http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/215393