The USA coal use chart gives an overview of what is happening with that dirty, dirty fuel. The top red line shows total production from US mines. The next orange line shows total consumption and the difference is our net exports. We do import some coal but we export far more, and that is small compared to the amount that we burn.
The third blue line is how much is burned to generate electricity. What is most notable is that about 90% of our coal consumption is to make electricity. Now you can see why the coal barons are fighting against gas and renewable electricity so hard. The electric business is their biggest customer by far.
At the bottom is a green line for industrial uses like making steel and that is going steadily down. I really expected a larger change with how much of the steel business has gone offshore. Below that is other which includes residential, commercial, and transportation uses. These are so small that they can be safely ignored.
The Rising and Falling
You can see why the coal barons thought they had the golden ticket — from 1960 to 2000 us Americans kept using more and more of it. OK, choo choo trains were gone, and home heating became dominated by natural gas and propane, and industry was moving to China, but Americans wanted more electricity every year so it’s all good. Our total production and consumption peaked in 2007 at just over one billion tons. That is a lot of coal to shovel but there was a problem.
Things started changing around 2000. Our electricity consumption stopped rising and generating electricity using natural gas became less expensive (I will go into all that in another article). In a sweet bit of irony because the electricity market had be deregulated (thanks to conservatives), and profit became king, coal fired electric generating units started closing and gas fired electric generating units opened in their place. As of 2018 natural gas generators create more of our electricity than coal and coal consumption is down to 53% of the 2007 peak!
From 2007 to 2019, just twelve years, coal consumption has been cut almost in half. This is not due to environmental laws or renewable energy (although the usual suspects will scream about those things) but just because natural gas fueled electricity generation became steadily less expensive than coal fired generation. About 90% of the retired coal generating capacity was replaced with natural gas generating capacity.
The Future
There is no saving the coal business in America. It is a zombie technology — walking dead. I don’t think it will go to nothing unless outlawed but I do see it continuing downward at the current rate for at least five more years according to planned closures. Some will talk about exporting coal but that is a foolish bet. Coal is expensive to transport and anyplace that uses lots of coal already has lots of coal right there. Buying American coal would just be a big waste of money to them. There will still be boutique markets for specialty coal but that is a very small tonnage.
In 2018 there were 740 operable coal fired electricity generating units in the USA (most power plants have multiple units — just count the smokestacks and you know the number of units). There were only 2 under construction and one of those should have been completed last year. Since any construction is usually planned years in advance then it is clear that no more coal generators will be built and existing units will continue closing until only the least expensive are left.
The Main Points
Coal usage has risen for decades due to being a low cost domestic fuel with little competition. Industries that used coal have moved away once another fuel was made practical. Locomotives and ships changed to fuel oil and diesel engines, building heat changed to oil and natural gas, etc and they moved away quickly because coal is nasty on many levels. The only industry left for big coal is electricity generation and that is also moving to natural gas as fast as is practical.
I have left out a lot of details about electricity generation since this article is focused on only coal usage, but there will be more info soon. Up next is an overview of coal production and consumption in the rest of the world that you don’t want to miss because there are some surprises.