Coal may not be the preferred fuel for power generation in these times of heightened green politics, but it is still fundamental to power generation in the world, Li Xiaohai, Chairman of Sunon Asogli Power Company Ltd. has said, asking why Africa has been left out of the coal revolution that was fundamental to Western industrialisation.

“There is some misunderstanding. Coal is always fundamental to thermal energy in the world; it is bigger than oil, it is bigger than gas; bigger than any resources currently in use,” Li Xiaohai told the B&FT.

“You can find out about the developed countries: Russia, Japan, China, India and South Africa. All those countries are still very much reliant on coal. But we don’t talk about it, because we all know there are environmental issues...”

Sunon Asogli, and by extension Ghana, is in a desperate search for alternative sources of fuel for power generation, which it needs to remain an important Independent Power Producer in the country.

For all its “unclean” nature, Li Xiaohai feels that Ghana has too much clean air to be bothered about importing a fraction of the tonnes of coal that are still in use around the world to solve its lingering energy crisis, which is fundamental to its growth.

His company, he said, is doing “preliminary investigations” into the possibility of starting coal-fired power plants in Ghana; the only stumbling block, though, might be the shallowness of the jetty at the port to allow berthing of the ship that would deliver the relatively heavy fuel.

“If we want to reduce the transportation bottleneck with coal, then we need a big jetty; let’s say a more-than 50,000-tonne jetty.” The findings of the study, he said, will be presented to Government for its consideration.

In any case, it is not all types of coal that are so “messy”, and through desulphurisation, coal can be burned in a cleaner form, he said. The ashes from the burning of coal, he added, are used as an additive in concrete for the construction industry.

Even as renewable fuels -- solar, wind, biofuel - increasingly become the preferred means of power generation in the world, Li Xiaohai, said these beloved fuels have their own environmental issues.

The silicon is solar panels, he said, is mined in some parts of the world to generate clean energy in other parts. And to produce bio-fuel, tracts of land meant for food production have to be used.

“You may feel that sun is clean, wind is clean, but the conversion is expensive and not reliable. You cannot ask the sun or the wind to just stay here and not move. They fluctuate all the time,” he said.

According to the International Energy Annual Report (2006), coal is the largest source of energy for the generation of electricity worldwide - as well as one of the largest worldwide anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide releases.

In 1999, world gross carbon dioxide emissions from coal usage were 8,666 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Coal-fired electric power generation emits around 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide for every megawatt-hour generated, which is almost double the approximately 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide released by a natural gas-fired electric plant per megawatt-hour generated.

However, Paul Roberts, a pessimist of traditional forms of fuel, conceded in his book titled The End of Oil that: “The quality of a particular coal depends on its carbon content: high-carbon coals burn hot and relatively cleanly; low-carbon coals do not.”

Coal is extracted from the ground by coal mining; either underground by shaft mining or at ground level by open-pit mining extraction.

Since 1983 the world’s top coal producer has been China; in 2011 China produced 3,520 millions of tonnes of coal -- 49.5% of 7,695 million tonnes world coal production.

Other large producers in 2011 were United States (993 million tonnes), India (589 million), European Union (576 million) and Australia (416 million).

In 2010, the largest exporters were Australia with 328 million tonnes (27.1% of world coal export) and Indonesia with 316 million tonnes (26.1%), while the largest importers were Japan with 207 million tonnes (17.5% of world coal import), China with 195 million tonnes (16.6%) and South Korea with 126 million tonnes (10.7%).