The US government in June this year published its new program to protect the environment, which provides for a third to reduce the amount of harmful emissions into the atmosphere. It is planned to achieve this indicator by 2030.
Experts suggest that, given the significant share of harmful emissions generated by coal-fired power plants, the country will have to carry out serious work to rebuild the existing thermal power plants. Shale gas also exerts significant pressure on coal, which is gradually becoming cheaper, displacing coal from the market as a less economically viable fuel.
The United States is currently one of the world's largest coal producers, with the domestic market consuming 90% of the volume produced. In case of refusal to use coal as the main type of fuel for American thermal power plants, namely, they consume a significant part of coal in the country, a situation arises when raw material producers will need to look for new sales markets that will lead to an increase in export supplies.
Experts note that one of the most likely options for organizing export deliveries is the European direction. In Europe, the cost of natural gas remains quite high, which does not allow the transition to "blue fuel" to be fully implemented, while maintaining the need for coal. At the same time, its production in the EU is gradually decreasing.
It should be noted that coal supplies to the domestic American market will continue, but the structure will change significantly. Import purchases of coal continue in the United States. So, in the first three months of this year, about 1 million 230 thousand tons of bottom fuel were purchased in other countries, while the growth of indicators against the background of the same period in 2013 was 73.1%.
It should be noted that the import of coal from Russia is also growing, which sold 33 million tons on foreign markets in 2013.
On the whole, experts are calm about the new program, since it will not be able to have a rapid impact on the world coal market, making gradual adjustments to it. It is possible that producers in the United States will refuse export deliveries and will mothball the fields.
In general, as the Internet portal "Business News" writes, time will tell.
Based on materials from the Internet site " Business News ".
