This is very much expected. In 2005 Oil consumption increased only 1.5 % (versus 3.5 % in 2004) and the Coal use must have surged, since may power plants, heaters, pumpsets which were oil fired could have been converted to Coal.

Now if Coal comes to Vehicles, expect Coal to overtake Oil soon.

We can provide a massive amount of employment by investing in wind, solar, nuclear, etc. etc. etc. From an employment perspective, coal isn't needed at all. Establish nuclear as the base load generating capacity and use wind, hydro, solar, biofuels, etc. as a supplement.

We can't start in a few decades. We must start now.

The next nuclear plant would go online in ten years at best.Wind and solar are growing by leaps and bounds but are still a small percentage{It now appears they will approach up to twenty percent of needs in the next ten to fifteen years.}.If eestore or someone else achieves a battery breakthrough Im certainly willing to leapfrog over fossil fuel tech.Off peak charging would allow us to use idle generating capacity.With our growing population however{darned people keep living longer}there still remains a power gap.I do want to start now but when I add up the watts from the tech coming online they dont fill the gap.I am optimistic and Im willing to listen to a good sales pitch.Im just cautious of my optimism in supertech becoming blind faith.As for coal not being needed,the coal state reps are going to do their damndest to make it necessary.Their constituents will insist that they do so.Finding the cleanest way to use it may be the best and only compromise we will obtain.If we are intransigent between the ideal and the doable we may not start for decades.I was talking about starting now with the doable and transitioning to the ideal within two decades.I think ten out of ten "experts" would tell me I was wildy optomistic with even that prognostication.

The twin issues in electricity generation are capacity and timing. Broadly speaking, we need to have a certain amount of installed capacity, but equally importantly, we need to be able to vary output to match varied demand.

We can divide conventional generating technologies into two groups: Low cost baseline generation, and higher cost peak power generation. Coal and nuclear produce each marginal kwh pretty cheaply, but cannot be easily ramped up or down. Oil and especially natural gas cost more per kwh, but can be ramped up and down pretty quickly. Hydro is both low cost and easily variable, but there is a limited supply of it; i.e., we have already dammed all the rivers we could easily dam. Certain hydro installations support backpumping, where excess off-peak power can be stored by pumping water to an uphill impound, which is then released downstream during higher-demand moments. Again, there is a limited number of places where such installations can be built, and local environmental protests usually prevent new ones from leaving the drawing boards. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taum_Sauk_pumped_storage_plant

Electricity demand varies throughout the day, and its graph can be imagined to have the form of a wave.

If you build enough low-marginal-cost capacity to satisfy peak demand, the cost of running those plants full time, even when there is much lower demand, (remember, they cannot be ramped up or down too easily) will outweight the benefits of having that peak hour demand met from a "low cost" source. If you build too little low-cost capacity, then you will be turning to higher-marginal cost generation for too many hours of the day. The trick in the current marketplace is to find the medium.

Alternative energy sources and advancing technologies fit into the picture in the following ways: Variable power sources can be most easily used in conjunction with, or to partially displace, high-cost demand responsive sources. On a windy day, fewer if any natual gas fired plants will need to be ramped up during peak hours if wind turbines are putting out juice. On a non-windy day, gas turbines are there to pick up the slack. Solar is nice in concept, because periods of high output will often correlate with periods of high demand (i.e. hot sunny days when people want a/c). If you are in a generally high-wind area, you might try replacing all your baseline capacity with wind, and having a good deal of responsive-generation capacity on hand for a bad day. If wind turbines become cheap enough, that may be an economically efficient plan.

The other way in which advancing technology changes the electricity market is the possibility of energy storage. Currently, pumped storage is one of the few ways to store bulk electricity. Long-term, battery or fuel-cell farms could be another way. The advantage to storage is that off-peak power, either generated by fixed-output low cost plants like coal and nuclear, or generated by variable output plants like wind and not used at the time it is generated (and at present simply lost), could be put aside to supply our needs during moments of peak demand. That would displace many gas turbines.

Battery and fuel-cell powered EVs fit right into picture. By charging them up during off-peak hours, we could better use power which is currently going to waste, and displace petroleum consumption while we are at it. Longer term, by flattening the demand curve, we could make it sensible to move more of our generating mix to low-unit-cost sources. By making them capable of pushing power back up the grid during the highest-demand moments, we could turn them into mobile storage farms, reducing the need for dedicated construction of such facilities.

Such is the case for EVs. As such, I would imagine that big electrical utilities would be pushing them more vigorously, and provide a counterweight to the traditional pro-auto lobbies.

Please don't forget that mining coal destroys the local environment (not to mention co2 added to global environment). When the cost of this destruction is factored in renewables get very competitive.
Of course the fossil fuel industries never want you to include this in the calculations.

Currently Solar & Wind provides < 0.5 % of the World's energy needs, we cannot project these 2 sources to give 100 % of the World's energy needs.

Currently fossil fuels provides more than 85 % of the World's energy and pollution release from these sources is the biggest cause of concern.

So lets start on Oil which is the most expensive source and a cause for trouble in many parts of the World.

i hope that people in the green engergy learn to keep connecting dots as max reed has!