China is aware that its coal is running out and that it needs new sources of energy. The rest of the world blunders along on the assumption that fossil fuels will remain plentiful.
Guest essay by David Archibald
At a conference on coal gasification in Colorado Springs on 12th October, the lead speaker was Dr Yong-Wang Li of Synfuels China. The third slide of his presentation contained this statement:
That includes coal. There are people being born in China today who will see the end of coal. This agrees with my own analysis which has China having burnt through half of its coal endowment by 2025:
Coal production in China is relatively opaque. Last month the E.I.A. revised its estimate of Chinese energy consumption from coal by 14%. Despite China’s agreements with the Obama administration to curtail carbon dioxide emissions, and its finite reserves, China is further increasing its coal consumption by building coal-to-synthetic natural gas (SNG) plants. Possibly more than 30 will be built, increasing coal consumption by more than 400 million tonnes per annum. According to theory of the consumption of a finite resource, production cost rises once half of the resource has been consumed. On that basis, the cost of doing everthing in China will start rising appreciably from 2025 and China’s relative competitiveness will start declining.
As Dr Li noted, China has to develop new energy resources. At least China is aware of their problem. In 2014, the team developing the Chinese thorium molten salt reactor were told to do in ten years rather than the original 25 years they had given themselves. Researchers working on the project said they were under unprecedented “war-like” pressure to succeed. Ideally, for China, the decline in coal production coming from the mid-2020s will be seamlessly replaced by a ramp up in nuclear power production from thorium reactors.
I’m looking forward to Mr. Fusion.
We’re 20 years away from having fusion as a power source. And have been for the last 50 years.
That is too true – and I’m a nuclear engineer!
It is a crime that political crap got in the way of liquid thorium reactors being developed ages ago. All the advantages of fusion (power too cheap to meter, no really!) but doable today.
Coal is an important component of our energy mix. But I agree with the Chinese. Accessible reserves will run out before 2050. Since it takes 15 to 20 years for a new technology to be widely accepted, proven, and practical, it would need to be in Beta stage by 2030.
Are going to run out of coal before or after peak oil? IIRC, peak oil occurred about 10 years ago, which is why oil has declined in price by 60% over the last year.
All resource shortage stories are the same and have the same validity.
I thought we had at least 100 years of coal?
“synthetic natural gas” is an oxymoron. The original gases for lighting/cooking were synthetic, so we called the stuff from rocks “natural”.
Assumptions of and previous projections of China’s energy useage were based on a population growth curve driven by a 1-Child Policy. As of last Friday that is now a 2-Child Policy.
The West is engaging in economic suicidal folly if it believes the lies of Barack Obama and his ignorant drive to cut US oil, coal, and gas energy use. As the US and the West drives for deep cuts in energy use and the fact that China does not have to set any carbon emission limits until 2030, the implications are clear, and it is a dire future for the West if Obama has his way.
None of this matters as we split atoms decades ago. All else is politics.
At least these Chinese show the truth about coal consumption in China and India. Western ignorants claim that they are about on the same level. Not at all!
there is lots of coal in mongolia that hasn’t been mined yet, it’s too far to compete with chinese coal from their ports.
the graph above is probably way too low in terms of future world production.
Involuntary-decarbonization — sounds like some kind of disease.
One that’s quite often fatal.
Anyone interested in knowing more about thorium reactors, here are a couple of links to videos about it on youtube:
http://youtu.be/uK367T7h6ZY
http://youtu.be/P9M__yYbsZ4
No, the rest of the world is not “blundering along”. I know that, because even as the most casual lay observer that I am, I am aware of leading people in the industry saying, for example for oil, that production can carry on as is for at least another 150 years.
And those are not even the actual resources, those are only the resources that are deemed worth pumping at the present market price. There is a lot more oil, and aloooot more we know there is but haven’t tapped yet, a lot to be discovered still, and about everywhere we have stopped pumping it already, we can go back and get a lot, lot more because again, based on cost, the historic oil fields haven’t been half exploited because it was always cheaper to move on. Everybody’s favourite Prof Muller has a talk on this, but that is not where I am getting my insight from, you can hear this from various people in the oil industry, and heck, only very recently, the World Energy Council has called off peak oil all together, well, because for the above reasons, there really is no such thing in sight…
the above analysis is nonsense. Philip Foster MA has done a detailed analysis of fossil fuel resources which shows we have hundreds of years of fossil fuels left. also huge finds of oil and gas off the coasts of Brazil and Greenland
See my link below to the recent study by BP that suggests that there is several hundred years worth of oil and gas reserves.
Dear Philip can you please give a reply to this latest scare on the WUWT web site that we are running out of coal. Terri
Large areas of the UK are presently under a haze of fog, and it is predicted that this may continue for perhaps 20 days.
This obviously means that there is all but no wind blowing over much of the UK. true to form, the other day windfarms were only producing 1% of their nameplate capacity. How can a country expect to survive if reliant upon such an unreliable source of energy?.
Talking about resources, BP has just stated that there is no sign to Peak Oil being reached in the near future. It recons that there is more than 20 times the oil and gas needed for the next 35 years (ie., taking us through to 2050) even taking into account increased demands for oil and gas as developed nations develop. This report suggest that there must be enough Oil and Gas for the next 300 years, or thereabouts!
See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/11971280/The-Earth-is-not-running-out-of-oil-and-gas-BP-says.html
There is neither Peak Coal, nor Peak Oil in the foreseeable future, and given innovation, it is extremely unlikely that in the next 100 years man will still be reliant upon coal for base load power generation, nor oil for transport. Oil will be used for plastics and the like, but probably not for powering vehicles.
BP are big supporters of global warming. Either they are easily deluded fools or quite evil in promoting something they know to be wrong. If they are wrong on global warming, and they have had decades to figure it out, their statements on any subject cannot be taken seriously.
For the last 24hrs the UK has received 1.7% = 0.64GW from wind.
Meanwhile 37.5% from Combined Cycle Gas Turbine.
Impressive wind figures. We got a bargain there. (sarc)
And who is going to pay in the future for the clean up, if economically unsustainable turbines 75 miles from the coast are dumped into subsidiaries which declare bankruptcy?
I wonder? It couldn’t possibly fall into the lap of the taxpayer, again. Could it?
Such an outrageous thing could surely never happen…
I fail to understand how any politician could have supported the push for wind since it does not reduce overall CO2 emissions by any significant extent due to its intermittent nature and the need for conventional fossil fuel backup generation.
This backup generation is either run 100% of the time, but with power being drawn off only when the wind does not blow. On average the wind blows for about 25% of the time, but this type of back up runs not for 75% of the time, but for all the time, and therefore produces 100% of the CO2 emissions that it would produce even if no windfarm had been built. Alternatively, the back up is not run all the time but is instead run in ramp up/ramp down mode with the generation being ramped up when the wind is not blowing, and then ramped down when the wind blows. but this too does not reduce overall CO2 emissions since this mode of operation is very thirsty, just like urban driving (start stop driving in a car), and if anything this creates even more CO2 than would be the case had the back up generation simply be run in steady state mode.
When one adds in the emergency diesel generation to balance the grid, the CO2 emitted in siting the wind turbines in concrete (which is very CO2 intensive) and coupling these up to the grid, there is no measurable CO2 reduction at all.
But surely politicians must monitor the performance of windfarms. If they had done this the experience of the harsh winters of 2009 and 2010 when there was a blocking high sitting just off the UK for the best part of a month would have confirmed how unsuitable they were.
one of these winters, I can’t recall which one, I monitored the performance of the windfarms for nearly a month. In this time there were a few days when they outputted about 8% of their nameplate capacity, but most of the time they were producing only about 1 to 3% of their nameplate capacity. In such cold weather bearing in mind power required for heating the gearbox/shaft oil, and keeping the blades turning slowly so as not to distort the shaft, and/or bearings, they probably were net consumers of power!.
if the UK had been dependent on wind for a large part of its power in the winters of 2009 and 2010, it is no exaggeration to say that there would have been rolling blackouts leading to thousands, probably tens of thousands of deaths.
People often mistakenly think that they will be alright since they have gas or oil central heating. However, electricity is required for ignition and to run the pumps. Only those with wood fires or coal 9smokeless0 would have had heating in their homes for hours on end, and UK homes are old, draughty and damp such that serious problems would have arisen particularly for the old or infirmed.
This policy is an accident waiting to happen.
“I fail to understand how any politician could have supported the push for wind since it does not reduce overall CO2 emissions by any significant extent due to its intermittent nature and the need for conventional fossil fuel backup generation.”
In three words: money, power, control
“I fail to understand how any politician”
Two factors:
First, there are the friends/family/campaign donors who are getting rich supplying/operating the windmills to produce the power mandated by govt.
Second, there are the low information voters who go ohhh and ahhh when presented with shiny things mandated by govt.
One word……jobs.
Yet another forecast. Don’t these people ever learn?
Operators and investors have enough nous (and all the skin in the game) to make a determination on whether there will be enough fuel to power their investment over its life.
As and when that determination changes, investment will shift to different technologies.
In addition as technology continues to change, investment will shift to the lowest cost solution.
Yet another Malthusian chart is of no use to anyone.
Am I the only one who has noticed that China’s coal consumption on the graph resembles THIS Gary Larson Far Side cartoon… and THIS one…?
Perhaps China had these specific cartoons in mind when she began the steep ramp-up of coal production in the 21st century, and this single graph — with China’s Garfield/baby bump — represents the culmination of effort to this single end. Is this so far-fetched? Is it a coincidence that 2001 was a Year of the Snake?
If so, then bravo China! What a master stroke of genius, you carried it off beautifully. How could you have known that the rest of the world would flatten out on coal production or keep to its slow linear growth, so that your snake-bump could dominate the graph? It must have been quite a gamble, because it would have made good common sense for everyone to scale coal up significantly more within the same time frame, because coal has more reserves that are geologically proven to remain accessible and available than natural gas. It would have made sense, if keeping the lights on was a priority. You were gambling on everyone else’s foolishness… and it has paid off.
Advancements in any field, which includes energy, is just not predictable. Carbon dating and penicillin are relatively recent developments discovered like many great discoveries indirectly or by accident. Kind of like looking for the misplaced car keys and finding the flashlight that was misplaced a month ago.
Even as climate science strives for the heady days of the dark ages, science in general marches on at an amazing rate with undreamed, potentially civilization changing discoveries around every corner.
The way to handle “involuntary decarbonization” is to let the free market handle the situation. The free market handled the European “wood shortage” about 500 years ago when Europeans switched to coal,
the free market handled the “tin” shortage a little over 3000 year ago, and switched from bronze to iron.
As coal becomes more difficult to extract, thorium reactors, solar cells, etc automatically become relatively cheaper.
But there were bumps on the way. English iron production fell after they had burnt through their forests and before they discovered the use of coal in smelting.
The multiple instances of premature declarations of “peak” this and that geological resource over the past century and more suggest that we take projections of “peak coal” for China (and any other locale) with more than a grain of salt. On item after item, we’ve used more than what was estimated as total reserve four, six, eight decades ago, but now have more proven reserves than we did then, and estimates of resources keep growing. The distinction between reserve and resource is crucial.
Julian Simon showed this to be true when he won a bet against Paul (the Malthusian) Ehrlich.
Ehrlich is still making predictions and has influence over academia despite a dismal prediction record.
Remember science has to have predictive value,
Somewhat covered recently here; http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/03/paul-ehrlich-australia-will-become-a-third-world-country-if-we-dont-abandon-mining/
David Archibald,
I understand that in places like the U.S. and U.K. coal resources, at least the ones shallow enough to be extracted by conventional means, have been quite thoroughly mapped. So it actually makes sense to talk about how long reserves will last, unlike the case with oil or gas. But is that true in China? I seem to recall reading that large new coal deposits are being found and mapped in China. So the supply might last much longer than assumed in your figure.
Agree with Mike, both China’s exploration and coal mining methods are behind those in the west and they can both discover much more and make better use of their resources
(Fake screen name of banned commenter. ~mod.)
Peak Coal? I’m not so sure. Just as with oil, new technologies will, or should that be: may, make now inaccessible deposits exploitable. Underground gassification, use of robot technology, and who knows what else. Just this week BP annopunced that peak oil has been postponed by at least a century from the original estimates in the 1940-ies. Same story for natural gas. Why should coal be an exception?
Surely the South China Sea situation is evidence of how serious they are about this. Chinese mainland oil reservoirs were the location of some of the earliest wells drilled, several centuries ago in fact, in the world, long before the west considered oil more than interesting geological phenomenon. These have also mostly played long ago. The existing and potential oil in the area is primarily the reason that China is willing to risk war with every member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as well as the US and every major economic power that has shipping through the area.
[…]the lead speaker was Dr Yong-Wang Li of Synfuels China. The third slide of his presentation contained this statement:[…]
Are we supposed to take his ‘slide’ as some kind of ‘gospel’?
Really? So China will run out of Coal?
I really don’t think that’s going to happen. Not any time soon. My country (The UK) has hundreds of years of Coal still available. Australia has thousands of years worth. China, if it needs Coal, will purchase it from other countries (Brazil?). That assumes that China won’t find its supplies internally.
China consumes ~4 Billion Tons of coal per year
“There are an estimated 892 billion tonnes of proven coal reserves worldwide.” http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/where-coal-found
So, based on China’s consumption alone, there is only enough coal for 250 years, if everyone else on the planet stopped using coal
“This means that there is enough coal to last us around 110 years at current rates of production.” — http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/where-coal-found
This is from the world coal association website
China’s population demographics are a much larger problem than their coal supply.
They just ended the 1 child policy.