Category Archives: Coal 101

Coal is the leading source of electricity
: Fully 86% of the nation’s coal production goes to generateelectricity—filling some 52% of our current needs. By contrast, nuclear technology and natural gas contributearound one-fifth each, with the balance coming from hydro and other renewable sources.

Coal is our most stable and abundant asset
: America has fully 25% of the world’s proven coal reserves (morethan any other country), but only 2% of the world’s oil reserves and only 3% of the world’s natural gas reserves.Whereas our coal reserves could carry us through some two-and-a-half centuries of energy production., our oilwould last only 11.3 years and our natural gas only 9.5 years, according to the National Commission on EnergyPolicy (December, 2004).

Coal is unleashed through IGCC
: Currently the U.S. has around 300 GW of coal-fired power generationcapacity. Forward-reaching studies estimate that the U.S. will need to add nearly 90 GW of new coal-firedcapacity by 2025. As much as 62% of this new capacity will have to come from advanced clean coaltechnology—IGCC. The leveraging power of IGCC makes coal the most precious commodity in America’senergy arena:
inexpensive, clean, reliable, and domestic. CONTINUE READING..
Can Coal Save Social Security

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the rolethat the coal industry played in nineteenth- andearly twentieth-century Britain. Coal, along with cotton, was the driving force of the Britishindustrial revolution. By the time the First World War broke out in 1914, nearly two-thirds of all thecoal entering world trade was mined in Britain,and coal mining accounted for one in ten of GreatBritain’s male population in employment. The rapidexpansion of coal mining had a profound impactnot just upon the British economy but upon thesocial, cultural, religious, industrial and politicallife of the country.This six-volume, reset collection provides scholars with a wide variety of sources relating to the Victorian coal industry. It is no longer possible to view the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century industry in terms of an unchanging confrontation between owners and miners locked together inan incessant stream of strikes and lockouts. Thecollection takes into account recent developmentsin the historiography of coal mining, showingthat miners and their families did not live bleakly narrow lives in featureless, single-industry communities cut off from the rest of society.Coal is an essential topic for those concerned with the causes, course and consequences of industrialization and de-industrialization. Sourcesincluded in this edition are rare and have been
selected so as to re?ect both the diversity and change taking place within the coal industry, thecommunities which serviced it and the industrialrelations practices which emerged to regulate it. Continue reading ..
Coal in Victorian Britain

In November 2004, IFC concluded a mandate advising the Government of Mozambique on selecting a developer for the Moatize coal deposit in the poverty-stricken Zambezi Valley. The Moatize Coal Project is intended to serve as anchor project to develop the Zambezi Valley, increase economic activity, and improve local social conditions while also contributing to the country’s income.

Mozambique: Moatize Coal Deposit