Peak coal

The coal production peak is the point at which due to physical factors, the global coal production can not be increased. Coal has the largest of all fossil fuels static range of about 120 years. The timing of the coal production peak is expected around the year 2025.

There are two different Maximià, a mass-based (eg based in gigatonnes ) and an energy- related (calculated eg in EJ, a gigaton of high quality coal has about 25 EJ of energy content). The energetic quality of the coal takes some years significantly decreased, as reinforced grades are utilized with a lower heating value. Therefore, the specific energy production peak earlier than the mass-specific delivery tip is expected.

Much more relevant than the time of maximum coal production, however, is the time at which all fossil fuels, such as oil, natural gas and coal have reached their peak in sum be. The carbon plays a decisive role due to its wide occurrence. Currently about 7 Gt carbon per year are promoted, the World Energy Council is currently of about 860 Gt of coal reserves. Due to the logistic growth of the cumulative production of finite resources in the form of a sigmoid curve, the maximum production is well before the end of the static range. It has been achieved in the past in mature coalfields, when about 40-70 % of the total recoverable amounts were eliminated.

The coal may oil, whose production peak is reached probably faster, substitute means of coal liquefaction within certain limits. Coal is an energy source that could replace with currently available FT- art petroleum derivatives as fuel for freight and passenger traffic. With a shortage of crude oil may be substituted for the diesel equivalent fuel oil per pump from coal -derived electricity. From coal also hydrogen or ammonia can be extracted for the production of agriculturally important fertilizers by Haber- Bosch process, which have hitherto been derived from petroleum and natural gas.

The world energy demand increased so far in parallel with the growth of the world population. The supported through global communication via telephone and Internet, and especially by cheap transportation by ship and cheaper and cheaper air traffic acceleration of globalization allows the energy consumption to rise disproportionately. In 2004, the world energy demand grew by 4.3 % ( crude oil 3.4%, natural gas 3.3%, coal 6.3% ). On average about 3% energy increase can be expected at constant energy prices, in particular by emerging economies such as China and India.