Factoids
* Coal provides America’s railroads with more traffic and revenue than any other commodity.
* A typical train car holds between 115 and 117 tons of coal.
* Wyoming is the largest coal-producing state.
* Coal accounts for half of the electricity use in the U.S.
* Coal costs less than any other major fossil fuel source.
* The world’s largest producers and consumers of coal are China, Poland, Russia, India and the United States.
* Total world consumption of marketed energy is projected to increase by 57 percent from 2004 to 2030.
* Coal’s share of total world energy use climbed from 25 percent in 2003 to 26 percent in 2004 and is expected to increase to 28 percent by 2030.
* America has more than 250 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves, the equivalent of 800 billion barrels of oil, more than three times Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves.
* Texas is the largest coal-consuming state in the U.S. and is the largest consumer of electricity.
* According to an electric power industry journal, 23 of the 25 power plants in the U.S. that have the lowest operating costs (and therefore provide power to their consumers at the lowest prices) are powered by coal.
* Today, America’s coal-based generating fleet is 70% cleaner (based upon regulated emissions per unit of energy produced) thanks, in part, to $50 billion invested in new technologies.
* Since 1970, the use of coal to generate electricity in the U.S. has nearly tripled in response to growing electricity demand.
* U.S. electricity demand continues to increase even as energy efficiency gains are made. Despite the fact that we are continuing to become more energy efficient, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that electricity demand will grow by 41% by 2030.
* Using coal to generate electricity is less than a 1/3 of the cost of other fuels.
* Intermittent energy resources like wind and solar are used for meeting peak energy demand because they are not always available. That is different from coal, which is used to provide “baseload” power — the constant, steady supply of electricity we depend upon throughout the day.
* America has more than 200 years of available coal reserves.
americanpower.org
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