Future requirements and environmental concerns

Now-a-day whenever people mention Pacific Rim, inevitably certain distinctive features of this general area will automatically flash across our minds, such as: This is a very densely populated area; This area is experiencing the highest economic growth rate in the world for the last few decades; This area is expected to continuously lead the world in the growth of economy for the decades to come. With this general situation, one can imagine without any doubt that this area will need a great deal of energy to fuel their ever increasing economic activities. But, one of the most unique characteristics of this area is that it almost totally lacks indigenous energy resources and almost all of needed energy including coal has to be imported from outside. This paper reports that it is a general belief that most of the growth of coal demand for the coming decades will be in Pacific Rim area, and therefore the most opportunities will be in Pacific Rim area as well. Burning coal to fuel economic growth has its problems too. Some of these problems have become politically and internationally sensitive, such as acid rain, CO2 emission and greenhouse effect of CO2, etc. To some extent these problems will one way or another be threatening to future coal use