Study: "peak coal" coming as soon as 2011

 A new study seeks to shake up the assumption that use of coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, is bound to continue its inexorable rise.

In fact, the authors predict that world coal production may reach its peak as early as next year, and then begin a permanent decline.

The study, led by Tad Patzek, chairman of the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, and published in the August issue of Energy, predicts that by mid-century, the world's coal mining will supply only half as much energy as today.

The idea that the world will face "peak coal" as soon as 2011 flies in the face of most earlier estimates and analysis.

The London-based World Coal Institute, an industry group including the largest international coal producers, says "the use of coal will rise 60 percent over the next 20 years," and that "coal will last us for at least 119 years." And the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in its most recent international outlook, projects that coal consumption for electricity will grow more than 50 percent by 2035 unless policies are put in place to stop the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.

However, the Patzek study paints a far different picture-and not because people will use up the last of the coal in the ground. Rather, the world will finish off the coal that is easy to reach and high-quality-the coal that produces a large amount of energy per ton, the new study says. What remains will often be of lower quality, and progressively harder to dig up and bring to where it is used.

The study's prediction for the time of the peak-actually a peak in the energy produced by global coal production-may not turn out to be exactly right, Patzek said. "I'm not saying that on July 1, 2011, there will be a peak."

But the main thrust of the study is stark: "We are near or at the peak right now," he said.

Read more at National Geographic