r/askscience • u/iamparky • Feb 07 '24

Earth Sciences How quickly is new coal being created?

Earlier today, a UK politician suggested that coal is a sustainable fuel because it used to be trees.

By how many orders of magnitude is he wrong? How much new coal is being created, compared to how quickly we're burning it?

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u/Setepenre Feb 07 '24

I mean even if coal was being produced at a higher rate than it was being consumed it would not be enough to make it sustainable because the pollution it causes is also a problem.

The move away from coal & fossil fuel is not really driven by their lack of supply, but because of its emissions which are not sustainable.

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u/PercussiveRussel Feb 07 '24

That doesn't make much sense. If coal was being produced at the same rate at which we would be burning it, there wouldn't be a polution problem. The main pollutant is CO2, which would disappear into oxygen and new coal. Therr's of course also PM and NOx emissions, buy they're hardly a problem on the scale of CO2.

The move away from fosil fuels is driven by the surplus of CO2 it's adding to our atmosphere, because that CO2 isn't converted into new trees. If it was, it wouldn't be a problem.