Russian coal reserves will last for centuries, this is according to Sergey Mochalnikov, deputy head of the country’s Energy Ministry, on Friday during a board meeting of the Federal Subsoil Resources Management Agency.
According to him, taking into account both the subsoil resources that have been tapped and those that have not yet been tapped, the country will have a sufficient supply of coal for the next 300 years.
We do not need any additional reserves. When it comes to coal, our reserves have been explored for more than 100 years, and even if we use up all of our resources, we still have at least another 200 years’ worth of reserves. According to Mochalnikov, “we are doing well with both resources and reserves, and this allows the country as a whole to be secure in terms of energy.” Moreover, “we are doing well with both resources and reserves.”
Additionally, the deputy minister mentioned that all of the country’s current demands for coal are being met by producers in Russia. In the meantime, he mentioned that exports have been the primary driver of the coal industry, which has led to the opening of new deposits and energy clusters in the most eastern parts of the country.
Between 2021 to 2022, Russia produced 443.6 million tonnes of coal in 2022. Following the imposition of embargoes on Russian coal by the European Union and the United Kingdom in August of last year, russian coal exports decreased by 7.5%, reaching 210.9 million tonnes. The EU and the UK had previously been the recipients of nearly a third of Russian coal exports.
Coal producers increased the amount of coal they supplied to the domestic market by 12.2%, bringing the total to just over 172 million tonnes. At the same time, they increased the amount of russian coal they exported to ‘friendly’ countries, particularly China. As Moscow worked to reorient its trade and China increased its coal consumption in the wake of the post-pandemic rebound in industrial activity, Russia increased the amount of coal it shipped to the Asian nation by 11.2%, bringing the total to 59.5 million tonnes in the previous year.
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According to data provided by Chinese customs, China has kept up its stockpiling of Russian coal throughout this year, with the volume of imports hitting a record high last month at 8.8 million tonnes, which is an increase of 29% over the amount imported in February and almost three times the amount imported in March 2022 (3.1 million tonnes).
What is coal?
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock composed primarily of carbon along with various other elements, such as hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is formed from the remains of dead plants that lived millions of years ago, which were buried and subjected to intense heat and pressure over time. Coal is one of the most widely used fossil fuels in the world and is primarily used for electricity generation, as well as for industrial processes such as steel production and cement manufacturing.
What is the global count of coal-fired power plants?
As of September 2021, there were 8,022 coal-fired power stations around the world, according to the Global Energy Observatory. These power plants had a total installed capacity of approximately 2,221,684 megawatts (MW).
It’s worth noting that the number of coal-fired power plants and their capacity is constantly changing as new plants are built, old plants are retired, and some countries are phasing out coal as a source of energy. Additionally, some countries have announced plans to phase out coal-fired power plants in the coming years in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Russia, India and China have by far and large kept its distance from this drive and it seems likely that their demand for russian coal will continue into the foreseeable future.