With solar, wind and natural gas gaining ground on the electric grid, change is in the air. Signs of coal’s decline are written all over the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s annual coal report released this week, showing that despite a slight increase in coal consumption in 2013, coal production is down and coal mining jobs are down even more. The EIA’s 2014 coal analysis will be released at the end of this year. For the first time since 1993, coal production in the U.S. fell below 1 billion short tons in 2013, down to about 985 million tons in 2013 from 1.01 billion in 2012. (It takes about .00054 short tons of coal to generate 1 kilowatt hour of electricity. The average home uses 10,837 kwh of electricity annually, equivalent to the power generated by 5.8 short tons of coal.) Production in the West, where most U.S. coal is mined, dropped 2.4 percent in that time as coal mine employment fell 10.5 percent nationwide.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 23:26:17 +0000
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