WSJ "End of Coal" article. C'mon Man!

Sometimes an article appears that is so far from reality that one wonders if the author did any research at all. And so it is with Rebecca Smith's piece in Friday's Wall Street Journal. Using some anecdotal cases from the U.S., Smith moves frantically up the ladder of abstraction to the title "The Coal Age Nears Its End". But the global reality is that the coal age is not only continuing but growing rapidly. The world is in a "Super Cycle of Coal" that will continue for decades. In September, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projected that coal will be the world's most rapidly growing fuel through 2035. In November, the Paris based International Energy Agency (IEA) confirmed the centrality of coal over the same time frame. Both projections paralleled actual experience over the past decade as the march of coal-based energy increasingly gained ground on oil. In 2000, oil comprised 39% of global energy demand compared to 25% for coal. By 2010, the percentages were 33% for oil and 27% for coal. By 2035, oil will be at 27% and coal will reach 30%

Coal will be the leading source of incremental energy through 2035
Coal is the world's fastest growing fuel for measureable reasons -- abundance, security, affordability, versatility and amenability to clean coal technologies

 

Coal is the continuing cornerstone of global electricity
"Coal is the backbone of global electricity generation" IEA, 2011

 

In 2035, coal will still be the leading source of electricity in the world's largest economies, comprising 43% of the electricity in the United States, 68% of the power in China, and 67% in India. In addition, the major economies of Japan and Germany are planning coal generation based on forced or voluntary shortfalls of nuclear power. As a result, coal based power plants will comprise 35% of new generating capacity over the next 25 years -- as opposed to gas at 25%, hydro at 12% and nuclear at 4%.

What Coal Will Do Tomorrow (by 2020 alone)

And Smith's ethnocentric article is not even correct about her limited sample of one -- the United States. Coal not only will be the leading source of power at the global level but in America as well.

Coal as the leading source of incremental power in the U.S. through 2035
	Coal's Reliability
	In 2035, coal will account for just 28% of America's generating capacity, but it will produce 43% of the nation's power [IEA, 2011]

The fact checkers at the WSJ must have left early for Christmas.

If the United Nations' "Sustainable Energy for All" plan should come to pass, more than half of the resultant increase in electricity generation capacity is expected to be coal-fired. IEA, 2011

References:  Data and projections latest available from EIA, AEO,2011 and IEA, WEO,2011. Detailed references are available from author.