China’s Coal Crisis
David Winning
The Wall Street Journal
11/16/2010
SYDNEY—The idea of peak oil—the point at which global production reaches its maximum—has fixated the energy industry for years. Now, China is grappling with a new worry: peak coal.
State-run media reported that Beijing is considering capping domestic coal output in the 2011-2015 period, partly because officials worry miners are running down reserves too quickly to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding economy.
“China accounts for around 14% of global coal reserves but its share of global coal consumption is already over triple that at 47%, which is unsustainable,” Hong Kong-based brokerage CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets said in a report …
The rest of the article is at the Wall Street Journal but is available only to subscribers.
H/T FuturePundit:
Their main worry on coal consumption is not global warming. They want their reserves to last longer and would rather import more coal now in order to delay development of a later greater dependency on imported coal. Since imported coal will cost more one effect of this move could be to drive up Chinese demand for nuclear, wind, and other electric power sources.
China’s industrialization places demands on resources that could grow to be multiples of current US resource consumption.
