Coal Follow Oil Curve

Patzek's study uses a version of a method developed by the legendary father of “peak oil” theory, Marion King Hubbert, to analyze coal reserves. Hubbert, at the time a Shell Oil petroleum geologist, used prior production history to correctly predict 15 years in advance that U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970s.

Hubbert's method, a controversial one, assumes that production follows a bell-shaped curve over time.

When there are many different oil wells or coal mines operating independently, the sum of all their production tends to follow such a bell curve over time—starting off small, rising to a peak, and then dropping again as the resources are depleted.

Oil in the United States has followed this pattern, as has coal in the United Kingdom.

Patzek's study, “A global coal production forecast with multi-Hubbert cycle analysis,” modifies Hubbert's method to allow for several bell curves, to reflect the development of coal mines in different parts of the world and the use of different technologies.

Patzek's study is not the only one to conclude that the reserve estimates are often too high. In recent years, chemical engineers at Newcastle University in Australia, the electrical engineer David Rutledge at the California Institute of Technology, and a German nonprofit called Energy Watch Group all have estimated that coal production would most likely peak in the next couple of decades.

One of the most important questions involving the peak coal studies is what they mean for climate change policy. Patzek’s study notes that its projections would mean that carbon emissions from global coal production would decline by 50 percent by 2050. That’s significantly below most of the carbon emissions scenarios produced by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Patzek’s paper opens with a swipe at the IPCC scenarios, saying they are “based on economic and policy considerations that appear to be unconstrained by geophysics.”

But the paper concludes with an appeal that climate action advocates could only applaud—a plea for using less energy and more efficient electricity generation.

“The global community should be devoting its attention to conservation and increasing efficiency of electrical power generation from coal,” the paper said. “Immediate upgrades of the existing electrical coal-fired power stations to new, ultra supercritical steam turbines that deliver [greater efficiency than current power plants] are urgently needed.”

The paper underscores the different drivers behind the push for a new path forward on energy—the call is much the same, whether the worry is too much coal or too little.