Quote (InsaneBobb @ 2 Feb 2024 21:15)
Fine. The bulk of US coal export is to china. And what we export is greater than what we use. Tell me, what is the "production total" going to? We record what we use to coal for on-shore. We record how much we export. The production totals you're listing don't add up. Where are they being used?
Well there are two major classifications of coal:
First one (low quality that burns bad) is called thermal coal - that is used by 217 thermal coal stations US still has operational. US produces 500M MT+ of that thermal coal and imports additional 5-10M MT (for PADD5 because it’s easier logistically). US exports about 30M MT to Japan, India, Netherlands and some other small destinations like Philippines. Only 1.5M MT went to China in 2023 which is peanuts in the grand scale of things.
The other type that burns very good (has high calorie value and low impurities) is called coking and is used to run steel smelters. US produces 50M MT of that and exports about 40M MT to countries I mentioned. None of that coking coal was exported to China. US doesn’t have many steel smelters anymore due to environmental reasons so steel smelting has been offshored to India, Indonesia, Russia, China and so on. You don’t need as much steel these days as we mostly use aluminium and various alloys for cars, planes and stuff which is smelted in electrolyzers.
There is a third type called the antracite - which is the top creme-de-la-creme stuff, but reserves of anthracite’s are pretty rare.
Here is a Wikipedia list of all US thermal coal stations operational:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal-fired_power_stations_in_the_United_StatesUS Coal production, consumption and trade data is public and well accounted for due to environmental activism.
This post was edited by Malopox on Feb 2 2024 02:32pm