From TradingMarkets.com:



You might also be interested to take a look at the website for the China Coal Industry Summit.

At any rate, the annual coal consumption rate of Three Billion Tons (100 tons per second!), by 2010 seems perfectly realistic to me, is one of the only times I've seen a realistic projection, and if anything is probably too low.  I would put it a year earlier at 2009.  2010 would reflect an annual increase rate of only 5.6% which is simply not in line with any recent economic and industrial productions data coming out of China.

The "Peak of 4 Billion between 2020 and 2030", on the other hand, seems far too low, and almost absurdly so.  4 Billion is only 33% more than 3, and at current growth rates would be achieved only 3 years after the 3-billion milestone is passed.  I would estimate 4 GT happening as early as 2012 or by 2015 at the latest, and that furthermore, 5GT will occur before 2020 and that production still will not have peaked.

So, since I project a doubling of China's coal use in a decade, to a level equivalent to all global production in 2003, I should try and justify that number, and I'll do so by concentrating on electricity.  China's population is projected to reach an astonishing 1.45 Billion by 2020.  By then, to have a per-capita electricity-generation rate equal to 4 Megawatt-hours - coal-fired generation and consumption will have to at least double - that's the 5GT.

Compare 4 MWH per person per year to the the level of electricity available in 2006 these countries: Hungary - 3.6, Poland - 4.2, Venezuela - 4.5, South Africa - 5.4, Greece - 6.1, UK - 6.6, Russia 7.0, Germany 7.7, South Korea - 8.5, Japan - 9.0, France 9.3, Taiwan - 10.3, United State - 14.1, and Canada - 17.5!

Now, how realistic is it to predict that a country, a rising global superpower, with an abundant, cheap, and indigenous source of energy, currently installing giant 500-MW Coal-fired power plants at a rate of three a week, presently adding more than the entire German electrical capacity each year, and in which that capacity has been growing at a steady rate of 15% for over five years, will, within the next 10 years, decide to settle and peak at a level of electricity availability between what was being enjoyed in the prosperous nations of Hungary and Poland a decade prior, and less than half of the prevalent conditions in neighboring Asian economies?

And that would be with the 5GT in 10 years, not the 4 predicted as a "peak" in 12-20 years.  And really, that's the whole point of China Coal Watch - to demonstrate quantitatively exactly how much more room there is to grow despite the long period of amazing growth we've already witnessed.

I have been reading my copy of the IEA's World Energy Outlook 2007 (analysis to come soon) and I'm afraid (and aghast) they make the same underestimation error that Mr. Guo Yuntao must be making above - though even the IEA predicts a doubling by 2030, more than Yuntao.  The IEA even explicitly admits in this edition that the 2007 estimates are much higher than prior WEO's because they have consistently and significantly underestimated the sustained growth rates in China. 

Despite this track record, they nevertheless retain their view that  the 2005-2030 average energy demand annual growth rate in China will be between only 3 and 4 percent.  Simply stated - and given recent history and the above electrical argument - I cannot understand how such an estimation is at all rational.  If China takes until 2020 to double their coal consumption (longer than I project) that would still be a 6% growth rate - and it is entirely reasonable to expect at least this rate.  They would have to sit still after 2020 to make the IEA's prediction come true.  Do you imagine that China will sit still in 2026 at where Poland was in 2006?