Page 332 - Advances In Productive, Safe, and Responsible Coal Mining

308 Advances in Productive, Safe, and Responsible Coal Mining

18,000 1400
16,000 1200
Emissions (1000 tons) 12,000 800 Annual electric generation coal consumption, (million short tons)
14,000
1000
10,000
8000
600
6000
4000
200
2000 400
0 0
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

SO PM Coal
NO x 2
Fig. 15.1 Trends in emissions from coal utilization versus coal consumption.

World population Electrification rate by country
billion people
Without electricity access
8 With electricity access

7
15% Percent with
6
electricity
1994 0
5 25% 50
55
4
60
3 85% 65
70
2 75% 75
80
1 85
90
0 2014 95
1994 2014 100
Fig. 15.2 Changes in the availability of electricity from 1994 to 2014 [7].

burning it would produce CO 2 . Here again, the industry has not shied away, but faced
the problem head on, leading efforts to develop technologies for carbon capture and
sequestration (CCS), enhanced oil recovery (EOR), and coal bed methane (CBM) pro-
duction. While the most viable solution is not yet proven, the author believes that
given the chance, the coal industry will find it. For that to happen, politically biased
policies that would divert critically important research funding away from technology
development research must be avoided. Those policies seek to equitably divide a fixed
amount of wealth and ignore the multiplying effect of the technology component of
Pilzer’s equation.