Free Republic

Driven by surging electricity demand in China and India, global coal use is set to hit an all-time high in 2024, disproving past predictions from energy “experts.” The International Energy Agency (IEA) — a Paris-based intergovernmental organization that provides energy policy recommendations — said in its Coal 2020 report that “coal demand is expected to flatten” and that “it is likely that global coal demand peaked in 2013 at just over 8Bt [billion tons].” Now, however, a Wednesday report from the agency predicts coal demand will reach a new record of nearly 8.8 billion tons in 2024, as increased coal...

The Bureau of Land Management has made it official Tuesday — coal leasing will end in the Powder River Basin by 2041. The move follows a court order in a federal lawsuit, Western Organization of Resource Councils et al. v. BLM. The judge on the case directed the BLM to redo its environmental analysis, and include both no-leasing and a limited coal leasing alternatives. As a result of that analysis, the BLM said it has determined that “additional leasing of BLM-administered coal is not necessary, based on the current analysis in the Final Supplemental EIS. The analysis indicates that operating...