Annual Report 2010 - Verein der Kohlenimporteure eV

Preamble – Environmentally-friendly Coal as a Bridge
After the Nuclear Disaster in Japan: What Will Determine the Future for Energy?
nancial
crisis was hardly felt, in the western world, mainly in the USA and Europe, it left much evidence of economic
downturn. In 2010, the USA and Europe gradually recovered. Accordingly, GDP also grew across the EU. However,
growth rates in the individual EU Member States varied, depending on the situation in the individual countries, including
their energy policies. Leading GDP growth, and thus once again the economic locomotive of Europe, was
Germany, whose economy grew by 3.6%.
Without coal, this development would not have been possible. Economic development in China and India is essentially
based on the generation of electricity using coal.
In Germany, hard coal acts as a major “swing-supplier”. This became obvious last year, when primary energy consumption
increased by approximately 4.6%, hard coal consumption grew by nearly 15.4% and power and heat
generation by about 7.8%.
latest estimates, it will take months for production to again reach the level prior to the weather disaster. Between 20
Mt and 100 Mt of coking coal could be affected by force majeure in 2011.
Unrest in Middle Eastern states such as Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Morocco and Libya, where people could gain freedom
from dictatorships thanks to peaceful revolution, again shows how quickly geopolitical situations can change.
energy prices are again high. In addition, raw material and power requirements in emerging economies such as China
and India continue to increase and cause markets to remain nervous.
was the massive earthquake and resulting tsunami, which cost thousands of human lives and devastated the northeast
nuclear power plant, whose extent and eventual impact on human and the environment are still unpredictable.
This misfortune in Japan affects us all and we very much hope that the country will remain free from further earthquake
damages and succeed in containing the nuclear disaster so that the population can begin to rebuild the destroyed
areas.
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