Coal
Contents |
[edit] Reserves
Top 20 countries by coal reserves (in mega-tonnes):
| Country | ReservesMt |
|---|---|
| United States | 238,308,000,000,000 |
| Russia | 157,010,000,000,000 |
| China | 114,500,000,000,000 |
| Australia | 76,200,000,000,000 |
| India | 58,600,000,000,000 |
| Ukraine | 33,873,000,000,000 |
| Kazakhstan | 31,300,000,000,000 |
| South Africa | 30,408,000,000,000 |
| Poland | 7,502,000,000,000 |
| Brazil | 7,059,000,000,000 |
| Colombia | 6,814,000,000,000 |
| Germany | 6,708,000,000,000 |
| Canada | 6,578,000,000,000 |
| Czech Republic | 4,501,000,000,000 |
| Indonesia | 4,328,000,000,000 |
| Greece | 3,900,000,000,000 |
| Hungary | 3,302,000,000,000 |
| Pakistan | 2,070,000,000,000 |
| Bulgaria | 1,996,000,000,000 |
| Turkey | 1,814,000,000,000 |
[edit] Transportation
Transportation costs of coal make up relatively high share of end price as coal is a cheap commodity. Thus most of coal is consumed within the vicinity of its production. Due to substantial costs of transportation there is no global market for coal.
[edit] Pricing
Due to lack of global market and interrelations with other markets coal prices are the least volatile from all fuel markets. Also most power plants using coal rely on scale and continuous operation (are [Base load|base load]]). And their fuel supply is based on long term contracts with nearby coal suppliers. There are also less bottlenecks in ramping coal production up and down compared to gas or oil as coal recovery is relatively a simpler.
[edit] Power generation
The largest consumer of coal is the power generation sector (~90%). Around half of all power generated in the world comes from burning coal. Coal is the least expensive way to generate electricity out of the fossil fuels (at 1/5 of other fuels). But it is also the most polluting of the fuels. Most coal power plants are base load as they take time and are expensive to cycle.
Coal prices are not linked to power prices as the commodity is relatively cheap. Though coal prices are likely to be linked to CO2 prices via electricity generation as coal is the major pollutant in the power sector.
[edit] Types of coal
- Hard coal
- Brown coal or Lignite
- Bituminous
- Anthracite
- Sub-bituminous
- Lignite
[edit] Coal as Fuel
- The cost of Coal when used as fuel is 6.3eur/mwh.
- The CO2 emissions of Coal when used as fuel is 94.6g/MJ.
