Replies

“We have 400 years coal.”

No ,not if you tried to replace the 100+ million bbls of oil consumed per day with coal to liquid synthetic fuels.

[Key Figures for 2023:
Total Consumption: 620 EJ.
Fossil Fuels: 505 EJ (81.5%).
Oil: 196 EJ (32%).
Coal: 164 EJ (26%).
Natural Gas: 144 EJ (23%).
Non-Fossil Fuels: 19%.
Hydro: 40 EJ (6%).
Nuclear: 25 EJ (4%).
Other Renewables (Wind, Solar, Biofuels): 51 EJ (8.2%).

In Terajoules (TJ):
Since 1 Exajoule (EJ) = 1,000,000 Terajoules (TJ):
Total Consumption: 620 EJ x 1,000,000 TJ/EJ = 620,000,000 TJ (620 million TJ). ]

This is with 2 billion people.using 80% of the above and 6 billion humans living virtually without access to energy consumption it’s under 1000kWh per year for those 6 billion. If all 8 billion humans consumed at EU levels which are 1/2 USA levels the world would need 6000 exajoules

Yeah no way no how coal puts out even 620 exajoules for anything more than a couple decades the number is 27 years and that’s resources at ANY cost not economically or technically recoverable.

Nope only at USA levels of current coal use and not a single tonne of export to a world fungible market would our coal even last 1 century let alone 4 and the environmental disaster from that much forever toxic ash piles, radioactive stack emissions << more uranium enters the air via combustion vapor than ends up in the fly ash bags. Hundreds of times more radioactivity than a nuclear reactor is allowed to release via fission gas venting.

So nope not.400 years not even close.

Fun fact there is more energy in the uranium in coal per.kg than burning the coal itself by a factor of more than 100 per kilogram of coal. Forget burning coal it’s best left in the dustbin of history, burn uranium in fast breeders, and do deep geothermal energy and thousands of gigawatt days worth of thermal storage too.

There is 43*10E15 exajoules in the top 3km of earth’s crust

That’s 43,000,000,000,000,000 exajoules the world uses 620 per year all in for all energy sources.

Geothermal is forever energy.