A study, led by Tad Patzek, chairman of the Department of
Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas
at Austin, says that the world will face "peak coal" as soon as
2011. (The study defines "peak coal" as the peak in the amount
of energy produced globally from coal.) In contrast, the U.S.
Energy Information Administration projects coal consumption for
electricity growing more than 50 percent by 2035 unless policies
are put in place to stop the growth to prevent greenhouse gas
emissions. Professor Patzek argues that the reserves estimates
of the United States and other countries overstate how much coal
is actually practical to mine and use. In his study, he
disregards national estimates of reserves and uses a version of
Hubbert’s technique for predicting peak oil. This only takes
into account actual production patterns. Other recent studies
have also concluded that coal reserve estimates are often too
high. Chemical engineers at Newcastle University in Australia,
the electrical engineer Da