The world’s nations and peoples experienced diverse and complex energy transitions. The locus of national and world power constantly shifted. Power blocs rose and decayed. The material wealth of some societies underwent mind boggling growth while other peoples seemed frozen in want and despair. Technologies advanced beyond the ability of intelligent people to comprehend their workings or to predict their consequences. Most recently, people in many lands have become unhappily aware of the harsh, wounding impact on fragile environments of unrestrained, and fossil fuel propelled, economic growth. The many imponderables associated with these transformations assumed a magnitude too great for me to fold within a generalization or two or three.
While other industrialized states lagged behind Americans in energy use per capita, by the late 1960s, they were as fully caught up as Americans in creating societies of abundance based on high energy use. With some variance in policies, governments complied with public demands for relatively cheap energy and hurried along the transition from coal to oil, natural gas, and, finally, nuclear power.
Since the early twentieth century, societies have known that coal mining destroyed landscapes and ruined groundwater. Cheap coal prices yielded low miner incomes which, in turn, produced ill-educated and sickly miner children. Non-interventionist governments permitted these consequences. In no way can one say that coal mining maximized social welfare. Since 1973, market forces have stimulated augmented coal mining, but now society is cognizant of the social and economic damage attending coal use. American taxpayers subsidize the compensation awarded to victims of black-lung disease while in Germany and Britain the various costs of eliminating unproductive mines are also socialized. The public is now paying for the harm done by coal mining. This bill rises steadily and now includes paying for the impacts of exported pollutants. Similarly, market forces may justify the revival of nuclear power, but since its employment damages local and global environments, no claims can be advanced for its welfare maximizing effects. Chernobyl spewed radiation into northern Italy and other areas, contaminating milk, vegetables, and other foods for scores of weeks. Compensation was not offered by the Soviet Union.
A hundred years ago, wood was the major energy source; then coal become dominant until the early 1960’s, when oil become the major world energy source. Quite recently, natural gas, because of a perceived environmental advantage and low cost, has become popular. Oil and coal usage has levelled, while nuclear and renewables are growing slowly; natural gas use is rapidly expanding. Coal is, in fact, a series of carbonaceous fuels. They differ one from the other in their content of fixed carbon, volatile matter, and moisture. The higher the percentage of carbon, the greater the heat value. Anthracite ranks at the top, followed in descending order by bituminous and subbituminous coals, and lignite. Coal is still the most abundant fuel in the world. It is a widely distributed resource. Many of the world’s coal resources can be recovered at acceptable cost, both in terms of capital investment and operating costs. The world’s proven coal reserves at the end of 1993 were 1,039,182 Mt. Proven reserves of coal are generally taken to be those quantities which geological and engineering information indicate with reasonable certainty can be recovered in the future from known deposits under existing economic and operating conditions. The R/P ratio for 1993 was 236. The ratio is much greater if both proven and recoverable reserves are taken into account. Coal is the most abundant fossil fuel in the world, but it can be unpopular because of environmental concerns. The only option at present is to deploy clean-coal technologies, but these are not yet fully developed in terms of efficiency and low costs. Slovakia also greatly reduced its use of coal and oil for electricity production and heating, and increased its use of natural gas. 1
In America, coal faced severe oil and natural gas competition, the former pegged cheaply because of low production costs, and the latter kept at a low price by regulatory agencies. By the early 1970s, natural gas had penetrated coal markets in Europe while coal also suffered from the incursion of nuclear power, heavily subsidized by national governments.
If solid fuel retains its dominant role nationwide in the generation of electric power, it will have to clean up its act by significantly reducing the pollution now associated with combustion. While many environmentalists may see the idea of clean coal as an oxymoron, people in the mining industry believe that the combustion of coal does not have to be harmful to the environment. This has been the goal of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Technology Demonstration Program, by means of which, since 1986, public and private funds have supported developmental projects for advanced coal-burning technologies. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 authorized a continuation of the federal government’s contributions beyond the original termination date of 1994 in order to keep alive the goal of nonpolluting coal.
The replacement of coal in industry by gas or oil, or oil in the residential sector (households) by gas or electricity has an impact on energy demand. Fuel substitution may increase or decrease overall demand. The use of gas in industrial processes normally leads to a higher conversion efficiency. But in the residential sector, the replacement of coal- or oil-fired installations by gas or electricity may lead to higher energy consumption through an increase in the service level, as single furnace systems that norU+00Amally heat only a selected number of rooms are replaced by central heating, providing warmth for the entire home.
Until very recently, the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 had been increasing and accelerating since regular measurements began in 1958. Only in the mid-1990s has there been a levelling-off, probably because of the world-wide recession, the run-down of industry in the former Soviet bloc and the substitution of gas for coal. This pause is likely to be only temporary; if the concentrations resume their upward trend, they will eventually lead to significant climate changes.
The industrialised countries are the largest energy consumers, but the growth in energy consumption is much faster in the developing countries. Forecasts of continued rapid growth are accompanied by concern for sustainable development and global warming. In the twentieth century, crude oil has been the most important fuel: further resources may be discovered, but will ultimately be exhausted. Coal is still abundant. Natural gas has environmental and other advantages, but some major fields will soon pass their peak production levels.
For example, in the climate change case, the domestic fossil-fuel industry and the governments of the oil, coal, and gas-producing provinces have mirrored the role played internationally by the global fossil-fuel industry and the OPEC governments in leading the attack on the Rio commitments2
The crisis in world demand for coal began in the mid-1950s with the rapid decline in oil prices, making oil a cheaper form of energy than coal. Subsidization responses varied from exit (Japan) to output and employment maintenance (West Germany) to capacity reduction and modernization (France, Great Britain) to regional bailouts (Canada). In the late 1970s, recovery of the industry was aided by the high oil prices consequent upon the oil crises, which made coal of considerable interest as an alternative fuel source. However, as prices have stabilized, this interest has waned, and plans to expand production and develop new coal-based energy products such as Synfuel have been shelved (e.g. in West Germany and the US).3
North Sea and Soviet natural gas replaced some petroleum and coal in western Europe. Unfortunately, coal use also rose, an example of substitution that carried with it substantial environmental cost.
There are huge reserves of coal available; given a level playing field, coal could be price-competitive; the coal industry was almost entirely extractive and open-cast; coal-bed methane was a viable energy source; geothermal exploitation of coal reserves might be the ultimate way of extracting energy. The potential for the exploitation of resources can be summarised as follows:
• Gas-there is little potential; more gas is likely to be produced by the Asian states.
• Coal-the reserves (as is usually the case in coal-producing countries) will be largely used in Russia. There will be no new coal markets there.
• Oil-this resource has been overexploited. Investment in technology may lead to reduced oil use.
• Hydro-electricity-there is great potential for development, especially in the Asian republics, provided that there is adequate development of long-distance transmission technology.
• Nuclear power-Russia is unlikely to close nuclear power stations, as at the moment they are responsible for a large proportion of energy production.
Coal is the most abundant fossil fuel in the world, but it can be unpopular because of environmental concerns.
Table 1. Coal production
Country
World coal production (%)
USA
24.0
Former USSR
12.0
China
26.0
Australia
5.6
India
5.8
Reference List
1. Balajka, J., Judák, J. and Peschl, J. 1996. “Vývoj Emisí CO2 v SR v Odbobí Transformácie Ekonomiky (CO2 Emissions Development in Slovakia During the Economic Transformation).” Ochrana ovzduší 8, 3:9-13.
2. Dotto, L. 1999. Storm Warning: Gambling With the Climate of Our Planet. Toronto: Doubleday Canada.
3. Howse R, Michael J. Trebilcock and Chandler M. A. 1990. Trade and Transitions: A Comparative Analysis of Adjustment Policies.. London: Routledge.
