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Reply to "Wind, solar to be cheapest form of power generation by 2030: Study"

US Coal Exports

  • First quarter 2017 U.S. coal exports (22.3 million short tons) increased 15.3% from fourth quarter 2016 and increased 57.6% from first quarter 2016. The average price of U.S. coal exports during the first quarter 2017 was $110.44 per short ton.

 

  • The United States continued to import coal primarily from Colombia (86.1%), Canada (10.7%), and Indonesia (3.1%). No imports were recorded from Australia for first quarter 2017. U.S. coal imports in first quarter 2017 totaled 1.9 million short tons. The average price of U.S. coal imports during the first quarter 2017 was $74.81 per short ton.

 

  • Steam coal exports totaled 10.1 million short tons (31.6% higher than fourth quarter 2016); metallurgical coal exports totaled 12.2 million short tons (4.6% higher than fourth quarter 2016).

https://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/

 German coal use

"COAL

Germany's largest share of domestic fossil fuels is in the form of coal. It still mines lignite (or brown coal) in open cast mines on a large scale for power production - 183 million tonnes in 2013 - and therefore does not import any brown coal. This makes it the world's largest consumer of brown coal, even though this fuel leads to particularly high amounts of CO2 emissions. It also still has extensive deposits.

At present, Germany also still mines some of the more efficient hard coal it uses. But it needs to cover almost 90 percent of its demand with supplies from abroad. Germany imported 53 million tonnes in 2013. Its leading coal suppliers are Russia (29 percent), Columbia (21 percent), and the United States (20 per cent). Germany's last hard coal mines are slated to close in 2019 - after that, Germany will have to import all the hard coal it uses. (See the CLEW factsheet on coal for more details)

Hard coal amounted to about 13 percent of Germany’s primary energy use in 2013. Most of it is burned for power generation, producing 18 percent of Germany's electricity.

What impact will the Energiewende have on coal imports?

Germany's exit from nuclear power and low wholesale electricity prices have boosted the comparatively cheap generation of electricity from coal, leading to a marked increase in imports of hard coal. 

Long-term climate targets clearly imply Germany will have to abandon coal entirely by 2050 unless an affordable technology can be found to make coal clean. But exiting coal alone will not help supply security, as Germany will initially have to import more gas to compensate, concedes Juergen Nitsch, a former scientist from the German Aerospace Centre at Stuttgart, and an expert on energy scenarios.

Many critics of Germany's current push to reduce the use of CO2-intensive brown coal say that Germany should not abandon its only sizeable domestic energy source. Mining union IG BCE, for example, warns the Energiewende can only become a success if Germany doesn't play Russian roulette with its supply security. It argues that domestic energy sources ensure German companies don't become even more dependent on price and supply fluctuations on world markets. Our lignite can guarantee this in a balanced energy mix.

https://www.cleanenergywire.or...mported-fossil-fuels 


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