Coal production maximum

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The coal production maximum is the point in time at which, due to physical factors, global coal production can no longer be increased. Of all fossil fuels, coal has the largest static range at around 120 years. The time of maximum coal production is expected around the year 2025.

There are two different maxima, a mass-related (e.g. based on gigatons) and an energy-related (e.g. calculated in exajoules, one gigaton of high-quality coal has an energy content of approx. 25 EJ). The energetic quality of the coal mined has been declining significantly for several years, as more varieties with a lower calorific value are being used. Therefore, the energy-specific maximum funding is expected earlier than the mass-specific funding peak.

However, the point in time at which all fossil energies, such as crude oil , natural gas and coal, have reached their maximum extraction point in total, is much more relevant than the point in time of maximum coal production. Due to its large deposits, coal plays a decisive role in this. At the moment around 7 Gt of coal are mined per year, the World Energy Council is currently assuming around 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. In the past, it was achieved in mature coal fields when around 40–70% of the total recoverable amount had been mined.

Coal can, within certain limits, substitute crude oil, the maximum production of which will probably be reached more quickly, by means of coal liquefaction . Coal is an energy carrier that, with the currently available FT technology , could replace petroleum derivatives as fuel for freight and passenger traffic. In the event of a shortage of crude oil, electricity obtained from coal can be substituted for heating oil, which is equivalent to diesel, using a heat pump . Hydrogen or ammonia can also be obtained from coal for the production of agriculturally important fertilizers using the Haber-Bosch process , which were previously obtained from crude oil and natural gas.

The world energy demand has so far increased in parallel with the growth of the world population. The acceleration of globalization , supported by worldwide communication via telephony and the Internet and, above all, by inexpensive transport options by ship and increasingly cheaper air traffic , is causing energy consumption to rise disproportionately. In 2004, world energy demand grew by 4.3% (crude oil: 3.4%; natural gas: 3.3%; coal: 6.3%). On average, at constant prices for fossil fuels, around 3% growth in demand is to be expected, especially due to the growing emerging countries such as China and India .

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner Zittel, Jörg Schindler: COAL . Resources and Future Production. In: Energy Watch Group (Ed.): EWG-Paper No. 1/07 . Berlin March 2007, p. 1-47 ( online PDF [accessed April 30, 2014]). Online ( Memento from May 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ Steve Mohr, GM Evans: Forecasting coal production until 2100 . In: Fuel . tape 88 , no. 11 . Elsevier, November 2009, p. 2059–2067 , doi : 10.1016 / j.fuel.2009.01.032 ( online [accessed October 5, 2012]).
  3. ^ World Energy Council: 2010 Survey of Energy Resources . WEC, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-946121-02-1 ( online ( memento of March 31, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) PDF [accessed November 10, 2012]). 2010 Survey of Energy Resources ( Memento from August 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ David Rutledge: Estimating long-term world coal production with logit and probit transforms . In: International Journal of Coal Geology . tape 85 , no. 1 . Elsevier, January 2011, p. 23–33 , doi : 10.1016 / j.coal.2010.10.012 ( online [accessed November 10, 2012]).