Are we entering the age of coal????

I'll keep on saying it - CO2 emissions are not going to go down....no matter what...

Multibillion-dollar facilities that convert coal to oil are being studied across Asia, while utilities are shelving plans to build power plants that use natural gas or fuel oil because prices of those fuels track the cost of crude.

Crude-oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange are more than 50 per cent higher than they were a year ago and are within sight of an inflation-adjusted peak of $US102.81 a barrel set in early 1980.

"The longer oil prices stay at these levels, then the more the incentives are going to be there for exploiting coal reserves," said Cambridge Energy Research Associates coal expert Jim Brock.

Coal prices would have to rise nearly fivefold to match current oil prices on a unit-of-energy basis, he said, and the difference between the cost of the commodities "is actually widening", he said.

Sharp increases in oil prices in recent years have already encouraged China to substitute coal for oil. Morgan Stanley said China's oil-dependency ratio fell to 20 per cent in 2006 from 23per cent in 2002, while its reliance on coal had risen.

Asian energy consumers are attracted to coal because it is less vulnerable than oil to the geopolitical upheaval that can cause price volatility. Asia has a third of the world's coal reserves, which stood at 909.06 billion metric tons at the end of 2006, according to BP PLC's most recent statistical review of world energy. Most of Asia's reserves are shared by three countries: China, India and Australia.