Coal, it once was considered a salvation, but now it is demonized. One of the fallouts of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo was to spur coal usage in the United States. It was available in the US and plentiful, so why not? President Carter pushed its use in 1977, asking for consumption of it to increase by 66%, and we did manage to push consumption to one billion tons a year. Almost 450 percent of that consumption was mined in the Powder River Basin in Montana. The less sulfurous-sub bituminous coal that was mined there came into demand after the Clean Air Act of 1970. (Requiring reduced sulfur)
But with the advent of attention on CO2 emissions due to global warming, the writing is on the wall for coal, one of the worst CO2 emitters. Powder River coal production has now fallen 33% in the last ten years and if there is a $25 a ton CO2 tax applied to coal, as some estimate, it is thought that production could fall by 95% by 2030. US coal fired capacity in electricity generation has, since 2011 fallen by 82 Gigawatts to 235 GW. The coal mining industry is desperately trying to find alternative products to make from coal, like graphene or utilizing the carbon or CO2. They are also looking into CO2 capture, but the cost is too great and other product use is too limited. Globally as well, there is a big issue with air pollution, which we will discuss tomorrow. Unless CO2 capture can be made cheaper, coal’s days are numbered. Natural gas in most cases is pushing out coal use but the future of nat gas as well is not certain. King Coal has been dethroned, but how long will King Natural gas reign?