Coal use vs the GDP

A commenter posted on my blog about the record usage of coal in response to my post on the decrease in gasoline usage in the United States. He is right, the United States is using more coal now.

But honestly, what do you expect?

As the economy grows, more energy is required. Bringing more energy on the grid takes time. Most of the renewables are not reliable enough yet, so, old ways of creating energy are restarted. Coal plants work, they are reliable, and pretty cheap. Until greener alternatives come online, coal will be used to handle peak demand.

As you can see by this chart, coal usage has kept pace to, or lagged behind GDP growth. (Please note: I am neither an economist, nor a statistician, if there is an issue with the graph please don't attack me personally over it. I am not trying to misrepersent the truth here. I gathered the numbers from the link the poster had in his comment, and from sources I googled online.)

Hopefully, scrubbers and other clean coal technology can be employed to mitigate the health and environmental risks associated to coal power. This is irrespective of which side of the climate change debate you fall under.

This is the same issue the Ontario government is having trying to decommission the old coal fired generating stations.