I knew China burned a lot of coal.........

But WOW are they going through it like hot knife through butter. Here's some estimates from BP from June 2011:

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_interne ... t_2011.xls

If you look under the coal consumption tab the unit of measurement is Mtoe or "Million Tonnes of Oil Equivalent".

The US has remained relatively stable over the last decade and has even decreased consumption the last few years, we're around 500 Mtoe which is about 1 billion tons of coal. I'd attribute that mostly to the economic downturn and the increased use of NG.

China has increased usage from 730 Mtoe in 2000 to more than 1700 Mtoe in 2010, thats an increase of 2 billion tons in a decade and roughly 3.5 billion tons total. It's almost 4 times what we consume. This is almost half the coal consumed worldwide.

Even more interesting under the reserves tab and the R/P ratio column.

Reserves-to-production (R/P) ratio - If the reserves remaining at the end of the year are divided by the
production in that year, the result is the length of time that those remaining reserves would last if
production were to continue at that rate.

If they were to not increase production they have 35 years left. The US under same scenario has 241 years.

Isn't this why they are boating coal out of Alaska?

China is buying coal from Australia as fast as they can mine it. Indonesia is next.

..and that demonstrates the utter futility of us changing a couple of coal stations to burn daffodils (whatever) and killing peoples utility bills.

China uses great amounts of coal & oil, the big difference is China knows it can`t go on forever & rather than waiting until they are running on empty they are putting in other forms of energy everywhere they can.

In a decade or two China will be the worlds leader in solar electricity production. They have to do so, solar energy is the only unlimited source. With their political system setting the research and development priorities to solar is no problem. They will also be selling those solar systems to the rest of the world.

China is using coal as an "interim" power source until more nuclear units come online. Coastal China will be powered almost exclusively by nuclear in twenty years. Western China, with less population, will be where the "alternative" energy sources such as solar and wind will be focused and developed.

They have 13 reactors in operation with 27 more currently under construction with many more planned. China's goal is 250 Gigawatts by the year 2030.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf63.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_po ... c_of_China

Yanche wrote:In a decade or two China will be the worlds leader in solar electricity production. They have to do so, solar energy is the only unlimited source. With their political system setting the research and development priorities to solar is no problem. They will also be selling those solar systems to the rest of the world.

Even if we were to increase initiatives for solar and wind those jobs still go overseas.......

Richard S. wrote:

Yanche wrote:In a decade or two China will be the worlds leader in solar electricity production. They have to do so, solar energy is the only unlimited source. With their political system setting the research and development priorities to solar is no problem. They will also be selling those solar systems to the rest of the world.

Even if we were to increase initiatives for solar and wind those jobs still go overseas.......

Agreed. But the jobs to engineer installations and build them would be here. Just like many products; they are made overseas where the cost of production is less but the installation is by us or perhaps illegal workers.