Peak coal: sooner than you think

The reports’ findings are not uniformly encouraging for climate matters, though. The IFE authors suggest that price increases for coal may discourage deployment of technologies to capture and bury carbon to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: in poorer countries, “producing cheap and affordable electricity is more important than producing environmentally friendly electricity”.

A wake-up call on coal

Taken together, the EWG and IFE reports deliver a shocking message. For a world already concerned about future oil supplies, uncertainties about coal undercut one of the primary strategies - turning supposedly abundant coal into a liquid fuel - that is being touted for maintaining global transport networks.

The sustainability of China’s economic growth, which has largely been based on a rapid surge in coal consumption, is thrown into question. And the ability of the US to maintain its coal-powered electricity grids in coming decades is also cast into doubt.

In summary, we now have two authoritative studies reaching largely consistent conclusions with devastating implications for the global economy. Surely these studies deserve follow-up reviews of the data by the International Energy Agency. If the EWG and IFE conclusions hold, the world will need to respond quickly with an enormous shift in the directions of energy conservation and development of renewable sources of electricity.

Climate concerns are already drawing some nations in these directions; however, even nations leading the efforts may not be proceeding fast enough. For China and the United States, the world’s two most coal-dependent countries, the message could not be clearer: whether or not global climate concerns are taken seriously, it is time to fundamentally revise the current energy paradigm.