Any limit on coal use will not be imposed by a limit on the availability of physical resources of coal – but coal use could face limits and restrictions in the future which would affect the availability and price of energy. These changes in the relative market value of coal compared with other energy sources will impact on recoverable reserves when the economic impact is taken into account by individual countries when assessing their coal reserves.

Within the total world reserves, there was a slight adjustment between the three primary categories with the bituminous increasing by 2%, while sub-bituminous declined by 1% and lignite reserves by around 3% below the previous recorded levels.

The top ten countries accounted for 95% of the reserves of bituminous coal – which was equal to 53% of total coal reserves. These same ten countries also held over 85% of the sub-bituminous and lignite reserves. In total, these top ten countries on a reserves basis held just over 90% of the total reported coal reserves at the end of 1999.




On a geographic basis, South America is the one continent with little in the way of coal reserves – only 2.2% of total reserves and only 1.5% of the bituminous reserves. Africa has less than 6% of total reserves with these reserves concentrated in the bituminous category and dominated by South Africa with about 90% of the total. Botswana and Zimbabwe have the only significant reserves outside South Africa.

Both North America and Asia have over 25% each of total reserves. While the reserves in North America are almost equally split between bituminous coal and sub-bituminous/lignite, Asia has a significantly higher proportion of reserves in the bituminous classification, accounting for around 35% of total bituminous reserves worldwide.

Total coal reserves held by Europe were slightly over 30% of the world total, while the individual categories show a higher share of world sub-bituminous and lignite reserves and a lower proportion of bituminous (22%).

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