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Vietnam to Cut Coal Exports, May Phase Out Shipments
Beth Thomas and Winnie Zhu, Bloomberg
Vietnam, China's largest coal supplier, plans to reduce exports by 32 percent this year and gradually eliminate the sales to meet rising domestic demand, a government official said.

Coal exports may drop to a forecast 22 million metric tons from 32.2 million in 2007, Nguyen Khac Tho, vice director of the Ministry of Industry and Trade's energy and petroleum department, said yesterday in an interview in Hanoi. The ministry will recommend Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung halt overseas shipments by the world's eighth-largest exporter of energy coal after 2015.

Vietnam's plans may drive up costs for southern Chinese power producers forced to transport fuel from northern mines or import it from further afield. Prices climbed to records this year because of demand from China, which burns the fuel for 78 percent of its electricity, and disruptions to Australian and South African supplies.
(15 February 2008)

After the coal rush
Editorial, Houston Chronicle
Spiking global prices of coal should make energy experts rethink the wisdom of depending on it for long-term fueling of electricity plants.

... When natural gas prices soared in recent years, long-range planners for American utilities increasingly turned to coal-fired plants as the most economic way to address rising consumer demand for electricity. Because the U.S. has extensive deposits of coal, it was also touted as one way to help achieve domestic energy independence from foreign sources.

As a result, dozens of new coal plants are on drawing boards around the country. Unfortunately, the cheap coal they are premised on may be going the way of inexpensive oil and gas.

The same insatiable appetite in the exploding Chinese economy that has driven oil and gas prices upward is also rapidly inflating the cost of the newest black gold. As the Wall Street Journal reported this week, the cost of a metric ton of coal on the Asian market has risen from $40 less than two years ago to more than $120 as former coal exporter China is now buying supplies on the international market. Since 40 percent of worldwide electricity generation comes from coal, the added costs are one more major strain on the global economy.
(14 February 2008)

U.S. Moving Toward Ban on New Coal-Fired Power Plants
Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute
In a report compiled in early 2007, the U.S. Department of Energy listed 151 coal-fired power plants in the planning stages and talked about a resurgence in coal-fired electricity. But during 2007, 59 proposed U.S. coal-fired power plants were either refused licenses by state governments or quietly abandoned. In addition to the 59 plants that were dropped, close to 50 more coal plants are being contested in the courts, and the remaining plants will likely be challenged as they reach the permitting stage.

What began as a few local ripples of resistance to coal-fired power is quickly evolving into a national tidal wave of grassroots opposition from environmental, health, farm, and community organizations and a fast-growing number of state governments. The public at large is turning against coal. In a September 2007 national poll by the Opinion Research Corporation about which electricity source people would prefer, only 3 percent chose coal.
(14 February 2008)