Coal will be world's leading energy source by 2017 for every region in the world except the US-IEA

Jan. 2013, "China's Soaring Coal Consumption Poses Climate Challenge," ClimateWire, Daniel Cusick

"Chinese coal consumption surged for a 12th consecutive year in 2011, with the country burning 2.3 billion tons of the carbon-emitting mineral to run power plants, industrial boilers and other equipment to support its economic and population growth.

In a simple but striking chart published on its website, the U.S. Energy Information Administration plotted China's progress as the world's dominant coal-consuming country, shooting past rival economies like the United States, India and Russia as well as regional powers such as Japan and South Korea.

In fact, according to EIA, 325-million-ton increase in Chinese coal consumption in 2011 accounted for 87 percent of the entire world's growth for the year, which was estimated at 374 million tons. 

Since 2000, China has accounted for 82 percent of the world's coal demand growth, with a 2.3-billion-ton surge, the agency said. 

"China now accounts for 47 percent of global coal consumption -- almost as much as the rest of the world combined," EIA said of the latest figures.

The rising consumption numbers reflect a 200-plus percent increase in Chinese electricity generation since 2000, with most of the new power coming from coal-fired power plants. Chinese growth averaged 9 percent per year from 2000 to 2010, more than twice the 4 percent global growth rate for coal consumption. And when China is excluded from the tally, growth in coal use averaged only 1 percent for the rest of the world over the 2000-2010 period, according to EIA....

In its latest projections on global coal demand, issued last month, IEA said that by 2017 coal will come close to surpassing oil as the world's leading energy source, with every region of the world except the United States relying more heavily on the carbon-intensive energy resource. 
In fact, the world will burn around 1.2 billion more tons of coal per year in 2017 than it does today -- an amount equal to the current coal consumption of Russia and the United States combined, IEA noted.

In a December commentary for the Huffington Post, IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven described the world's quickening pace of coal consumption as a "troubling paradox" given international efforts to address global climate change, which many scientists link to the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of coal."....


Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net."
.

====================== 

Everyone knows global CO2 is skyrockting, that US CO2 could go to zero and it wouldn't help. This outcome has been known since the beginning of the CO2 scam decades ago. It's all been for nothing except genocide of the US and a lot of money: 

5/8/13, "Jack Mintz: Canada unfairly Gored," Financial Post opinion

"If climate policies have any effect, they must be achievable at the global level. It makes little sense for advanced countries to take on policies that hurt their own economic growth if environmental benefits are unattainable.

Such failure seems to be the case with China, Russia and others where carbon emissions are sharply on the rise. It is almost as if the Western countries are digging ditches, only to see them filled up by emerging countries following up from behind."








.