Coal & Renewable Energy
The continued development and deployment of
renewable energy will play an important role in
improving the environmental performance of
future energy production. However, there are a
number of significant practical and economic
barriers that limit the projected rate of growth
of renewable energy.
Renewable energy can be intermittent or
unpredictable and ‘site-dependent’, which
means they are only available at specific
locations. Wind energy, for example, depends
on whether and how strongly the wind is
blowing and even the best wind farms do not
normally operate for more than about onethird
of the time. Many forms of biomass are
The Greenhouse Effect
Diagram courtesy of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The Coal Resource: A Comprehensive Overview of Coal 37
seasonal and can be difficult to transport.
Coal-fired electricity can help support the
growth of renewable energy by balancing out
their intermittencies in power supply. Coal
can provide convenient, cheap base-load
power while renewables can be used to meet
peak demand. The economics and efficiency
of biomass renewables can also be improved
by co-firing with coal.
While clean coal technologies are improving
the environmental performance of coal-fired
power stations, its role as an affordable and
readily available energy source offers wider
environmental benefits by supporting