NATIONAL ENERGY POLICY REQUIRES RENEWED COAL RESOURCE, RESERVE, AND QUALITY ASSESSMENTS

The National Research Council has prioritized R&D needs for the upstream components (resource and reserve assessments, mine worker health and safety, environmental protection and reclamation etc.) of the coal fuel cycle, in response to a request from Congress. The context for these recommendations is the understanding that coal provides more than half of the nation's electricity and that future coal use overwhelmingly will be determined by carbon emissions policy and the technical and commercial feasibility of CO2 control measures, in addition to future electricity demand and the availability of alternative energy sources.

More than 90% of federal R&D funding is now directed towards ‘downstream' activities related to coal utilization, primarily for development of environmentally benign clean coal power generation technologies. Over the past 10-15 years, federal R&D to support mining regulation has remained constant, while resource and reserve assessment funding has declined by 30% and advanced mining R&D support has fallen dramatically to be just 0.2% of total R&D funding.

The NRC has recommended substantially increased funding levels, identifying collaboration and coordination among federal agencies, state agencies, academic institutions, and industry as necessary elements of future upstream R&D: • Improved resource, reserve, and quality assessments, both for the coal itself and for the CO2 sequestration resource (additional $20m). • Expanded mine worker health and safety research (additional $35m). • Additional environmental protection and reclamation research (additional $60m). • Renewed support for advanced coal mining and processing R&D (additional $29m).

Coal will continue to provide a major portion of national energy requirements for at least the next several decades, so it is imperative that policy makers are provided with accurate information describing the amount, location, and quality of the coal resources and reserves that will be required. There are definitely sufficient coal reserves for the next 15 years, and there are probably sufficient reserves for the next 100 years. However, increased production rates and more detailed reserve analyzes that take into account location, quality, recoverability, and transportation issues may substantially reduce the number of years supply.