1) While the international community agrees that it is essential to reduce coal consumption around the world, how is the coal industry doing?

Coal enabled the industrial revolution in the 18th century. Coal remained the main source of energy until the 1930s and covered most needs.
Coal was abundant in the first countries to experience the first industrial revolution: United Kingdom, then Germany, the major European countries and then the United States

Coal production has remained important since the middle of the 20th century because it is abundant and cheap. Largely replaced at least for the production of heat by fuel oil or natural gas after the war during the period of the glorious thirty, it regained its place when the oil shocks of the 1970s (Kippur War in 1973, Iranian revolution in 1979) drove the price of oil, and therefore that of fuel oil, to very high levels. Thus for the production of electricity the fuel oil which had taken a very important share of the market in the 1960s was replaced by coal (and also by nuclear and natural gas) in the 1980s.

The increase in coal consumption was particularly impressive in China in the 1990s and 2000s, after the economic revolution initiated by Dengtsiao Ping. At that time China was building a 1GW coal-fired power plant every week, equivalent to one of our first nuclear power plants. China consumes half of the coal used in the world. India has followed a similar trajectory even though its coal consumption is lower

Another major consumer of coal: the United States where a large part of the electricity was produced from this solid fuel recently. But coal has been largely replaced by gas, available in very large quantities and at a very low price due to the abundance of shale gas. Donald Trump's desire to preserve American coal production has suffered greatly from competition from shale gas.

2) Concerning coal, do we too often tend to confuse the quantity of coal consumed with the share of the energy market that it represents?

Coal remains after oil and before natural gas the second source of energy in the world. It is used at more than 60% for the production of electricity and coal is the first source of electricity in the world

3) How to explain that despite the efforts made, coal still has such an important place in the consumption of certain countries and more generally at the global level?

The great disadvantage of coal is that it is the fuel that emits the most CO2 and therefore greenhouse gases leading to climate change. But its big advantage is its availability at an often quite low cost. The production of coal in deep mines as was the case in France for example at the beginning of the previous century is over because it is much too expensive and dangerous: the explosions due to gas (coal bed methane in English, firedamp in French) were numerous and could cause the death of hundreds of workers. The Courrières disaster in 1906, in a mine near Lens, cost the lives of more than 1,000 people. Henceforth coal is often exploited in large surface mines. It's safer and production costs are low.

Coal remains very widely used in countries where it is the main source of energy. Asia is rich in coal but poor in oil and gas and despite, for example, the very great development of renewable energies in China, coal remains by far the main source of electricity. electricity even if the extreme pollution generated by the combustion of coal – in addition to the CO2 the combustion generates an intense atmospheric pollution. This leads the authorities to try to replace it with natural gas, which is much less polluting, and to develop hydraulic production (Three Gorges dam, the largest dam in the world whose power corresponds to that of more than about ten recent nuclear power plants) and nuclear production

4) Are we heading towards a reduction in the demand for coal or will it continue to increase despite everything in the near future?

The current economic recovery is generating considerable energy needs and coal, which is abundant and relatively inexpensive, remains a necessary source of energy for emerging Asian countries in particular, but also by example for some European countries (Germany, Poland).

Governments are aware of the extreme pollution linked to the use of coal and will try to replace it. But the process will be long. China does not announce a "peak of coal consumption" before 2030. Other countries (India, no doubt for example) are in a similar situation.