50% of global coal reserves are owned by which two countries named USA & Russia.

Coal is abundant – there are over 1.06 trillion tonnes of proven coal reserves worldwide. This means that at current rates of production, there is enough coal to last us around 132 years. The biggest reserves are in the USA, Russia, China, Australia and India

How is coal formed?Coal is a fossil fuel, formed from vegetation, which has been consolidated between other rock strata and altered by the combined effects of pressure and heat over millions of years to form coal seams. The energy we get from coal today comes from the energy that plants absorbed from the sun millions of years ago.

There are four types of coal; lignite, sub-bituminous, bituminous and anthracite, which are created during a process known as ‘coalification’.

Coalification means the degree of change undergone by coal as it matures from peat to anthracite. This has an important bearing on coal’s physical and chemical properties and is referred to as the ‘rank’ of the coal. Ranking is determined by the degree of transformation of the original plant material to carbon.

The quality of each coal deposit is determined by:

Types of vegetation from which the coal originated
Depths of burial
Temperatures and pressures at those depths
Length of time the coal has been forming in the deposit
In addition to carbon, coal contains hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and varying amounts of sulphur.

High-rank coals are high in carbon and therefore heat value, but low in hydrogen and oxygen.
Low-rank coals are low in carbon but high in hydrogen and oxygen content.