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http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2491667

There has to be a better way. We need a solution that will last at least fifty years.

What if I told you that there is one?

It’s coal.

But not how you think of coal.

We think of coal as going into a power plant that makes electricity. But that’s wasteful, believe it or not.

Here’s the math on gasoline, diesel and coal.

1 lb of gasoline contains about 2.2 x 10^7 Joules of energy.
1 lb of coal contains about 1.1 x 10^7 Joules of energy.

These are reasonably-comparable; another way to look at this is that you need about 200% of coal (in pounds) as you do in gasoline for the same energy content.

Edit: Numbers vary on coal depending on type. Changed to reflect the most-pessimistic reasonable observed number - 4/1 1:44 pm

We currently consume 378 million gallons of gasoline a day. At 6lbs/gallon (approximately) this is 2,268 million pounds. Reduced to short tons (2,000 lbs) this is 1.134 million short tons of gasoline/day, or 414 million short tons a year. Converted to coal, this is 828 short tons.

The most-current value I can find for distillate (diesel fuel) is 3.794 million barrels a day. At 42 gallons to the barrel, this is 159 million gallons of diesel fuel. Diesel contains about 20% more BTUs per gallon than gasoline, but is about 17% heavier at 7lbs/gallon, so if we convert simply based on weight we get close. So we have 1,113 million pounds of diesel daily; reduced to short tons that’s 0.557 million short tons of diesel daily, or 203 million short tons a year. Converted to coal, this is 406 million short tons.