Coal use declining in the U.S. (yay!) but going up everywhere else (boo!)

Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0

Good news, bad news

This story is a good example of why global warming and energy issues have to be looked at for the planet as a whole and not country by country or region by region. After all, all that matters for Earth's atmosphere is the absolute amount of greenhouse gas from fossil sources that we pump into it, not that the U.S.'s relative share of the total is going down. That's why I won't be celebrating the latest Energy Information Administration (EIA) numbers too much; they show that coal demand inside the U.S. is going down, mostly because of a glut of low-cost natural gas, but that this coal that isn't being used in the U.S. is exported to other parts of the world where demand is going up (Europe, Asia, etc).

EIA/Public Domain

As you can see in the chart above, Europe and Asia show the most dramatic upward trends, while the U.S. is the only region going down.

Some interesting facts to note: Indonesia has surpassed Autralia as the biggest coal exporter in the world. Most of that is soaked up by China, the largest importer of coal since 2011, an impressive thing since before 2009 China was a net exporter of coal.

The International Energy Agency writes:



Because it is the most carbon-intensive source of energy, as well as being dirty in other ways, coal should be at the top of the priority list for environmentalists everywhere. Policy changes that make us transition away from coal currently seem to offer the biggest return on effort invested, so to speak.

Solid Fuels Administration/Public Domain

Via EIA, Technology Review


Tags: Coal | Energy | Global Climate Change | Global Warming Causes

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