World Peak Coal Production Imminent?
In 1911 Winston Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty and instigated a fuel transition in the navy (where Welsh coal had been the principal fuel) to oil which offered many advantages including greater speed and range. Churchill commented:
"The oil supplies of the world were in the hands of vast oil trusts under foreign control. To commit the navy irrevocably to oil was indeed to take arms against a sea of troubles. If we overcame the difficulties and surmounted the risks, we should be able to raise the whole power and efficiency of the navy to a definitely higher level; better ships, better crews, higher economies, more intense forms of war power - in a word, mastery itself was the prize of the venture."
In 1913, UK coal production hit an all time peak and has been in decline ever since. We are nearly 100 years past peak coal production in the UK.
The exhaustion of the UK coal mines had been anticipated by William Stanley Jevons who, in 1866 wrote "The coal question: an inquiry concerning the progress of the nation, and the probable exhaustion of our coal mines" (available here). Jevons wrote:
"The expression "exhaustion of our coal mines," states the subject in the briefest form, but is sure to convey erroneous notions to those who do not reflect upon the long series of changes in our industrial condition which must result from the gradual deepening of our coal mines and the increased price of fuel. Many persons perhaps entertain a vague notion that some day our coal seams will be found emptied to the bottom, and swept clean like a coal-cellar."
Today the general view is that there is plenty of coal elsewhere in the world - hundreds of years worth.
Well, not according to a growing number of recent reports.
Perhaps the most accessible account of a number of recent reports about an early peak in coal production is the book "Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis" by Richard Heinberg (ISBN 978-1-905570-20-1). This book, published in 2009, reviews recent reports that put the peak in world coal production less than two decades away.
Here is a graph of past and future world coal production from one of the studies reviewed by Heinberg, the German Energy Watch Group, putting the peak in world coal production around 2025.
More recently a report from the University of Newcastle in Australia puts the coal peak between the years of 2014 and 2030, with the author's best guess being 2019. With regard to all fossil fuels, the author concludes that
... it is predicted that global fossil fuel production will peak before 2030. For this reason, it is imperative that appropriate action be taken as early as possible to mitigate the effects of fossil fuel decline, to avoid energy shortages in the near future.
Another recent study by Mikael Hook under the supervision of Kjell Aleklett of Uppsala University's Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group and published in the journal Fuel, puts world peak coal in the 2020 to 2050 timeframe.
But now, a brand new study puts the peak of world coal production even earlier. Not decades away - but months away. Next year. 2011.
The new study is reported in the paper "A global coal production forecast with multi-Hubbert Cycle analysis" by T. W. Patzek and G. D. Croft. Patzek is from the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas and Croft is from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. The paper is published in the journal Energy (volume 35, Issue 8, August 2010).
Here's the abstract. It's worth reading not just for what it says about the timing of the world coal peak, but what the implications are for climate change forecasts.
Based on economic and policy considerations that appear to be unconstrained by geophysics, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) generated forty carbon production and emissions scenarios. In this paper, we develop a base-case scenario for global coal production based on the physical multi-cycle Hubbert analysis of historical production data. Areas with large resources but little production history, such as Alaska and the Russian Far East, are treated as sensitivities on top of this base-case, producing an additional 125 Gt of coal. The value of this approach is that it provides a reality check on the magnitude of carbon emissions in a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario. The resulting base-case is significantly below 36 of the 40 carbon emission scenarios from the IPCC. The global peak of coal production from existing coalfields is predicted to occur close to the year 2011. The peak coal production rate is 160 EJ/y, and the peak carbon emissions from coal burning are 4.0 Gt C (15 Gt CO2) per year. After 2011, the production rates of coal and CO2 decline, reaching 1990 levels by the year 2037, and reaching 50% of the peak value in the year 2047. It is unlikely that future mines will reverse the trend predicted in this BAU scenario.
This report clearly puts peak coal production in 2011 with declining production and CO2 emissions thereafter. This imminent peak joins the peak of oil production which is also expected at about the same time if it has not happened already. Coal provides 25% of energy used in the world and oil 37%. It appears that, very soon 62% of the world's energy supplies will be in decline.
The energy decline from coal is quite dramatic and is shown in a figure taken from Patzek and Croft's paper.
world_coal_energy_peak.The CO2 emissions from coal follow a similar pattern peaking in 2011. Initially, from 2011 and up to 2050, the decline in CO2 emissions is 2% per year increasing to 4% thereafter.
The authors compare their best multi-Hubbert cycle match of the historical rate of carbon emissions from coal of all ranks worldwide (thick black line in the graph below) to the 40 IPCC coal emissions scenarios (the thin colour curves). From this analysis, the IPCC projections of CO2 from coal are far too pesimistic. That's not to say that climate change is not still a serious and potent threat - just that future forecasts of CO2 emissions may be overdone.
The message is clear. We are entering the twilight of the fossil fuel era largely unprepared and unaware. The consequences are enormous but thankfully, if this latest report is anywhere near correct, CO2 emissions will decline from their peak to date reached in 2008.
Update: 8th October 2010 Professor David Rutledge, Division of Engineering and Applied Science, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) gave a talk at the University of Edinburgh on Wednesday 22nd September 2010 titled "Hubbert's Peak, The Coal Question, and Climate Change". This talk challenged some fundamental assumptions concerning the amount of available fossil fuel for greenhouse warming and came to a similar general conclusion to the authors discussed above. His slides, Excel workbook and a video presentation can be viewed at Professor Rutledge's website.
Here I have reproduced a graph of cumulative carobon dioxide emissions from Professor Rutledge's presentation. His projection of resource constrained oil, natural gas and coal emissions are less than all 40 IPCC scenarios.
Fascinating, or threatening? Submitted by mahall on 5 August 2010 - 8:37pm.
Thanks Alister for pointing out these reports.
A fascinating prospect in a way, for those who try to predict the future as well as those who want an easy solution to the carbon emissions problem, but threatening at the same time .........
Fascinating in the sense of 'where on on earth do those figures come from, when many others are saying there's so much coal left? Threatening in the pressure they could put upon us if they're actually somewhere near the truth.
I think it's important all the time to remember the consequence of letting ourselves lose sight of the ball here though, through starting to believe that carbon dioxide emissions and possible global warming are all that matters, that 'the problem' will solve itself through a gradual reduction in the availability of coal as well as oil, and that everything will be fine.
I suspect that if we don't find a way to start permanently reducing our energy consumption, not just carbon emissions, to make it easier for ourselves to work through the time it will take to fully establish sustainable sources of energy in our lives, we may notice the impact of more expensive energy supplies in a more immediate way than (locally at least) we might feel conscious of any effects of climate change. It's not clear yet that the growth pause brought on by the recession recently is going to be the start of that permanent reduction.
To finish on a very positive note, Transition says that we can reduce our energy consumption, and not feel that our lives are diminished as a result of it. Changed, yes, but not diminished.
Mike