Gerald Manners

COAL IN THE CONTEMPORARY ENERGY ECONOMY OF WESTERN EUROPE

For more than two decades, the energy economy of Western Europe has been undergoing a major transformation: its traditional and heavy reliance upon domestic supplies of solid fuels has been replaced by a new and substantial dependence upon imported oil, plus a growing exploitation of domestic and imported natural gas. The recent discovery and production of North Sea oil only slightly modifies this picture. The lower costs and the greater convenience of the new sources of energy forced upon the region's solid fuel industries both a relative and an absolute decline. Their output fell from nearly 800 million tonnes of coal equivalent (Mtce) in 1960 to 316 Mtce in 1974 (Table 8-1). By 1974, solid fuels met only 19 percent of the region's energy needs, compared with 62 percent fourteen years earlier.

The national economies of Western Europe retreated from coal at varied speeds. By 1977, the largest users of solid fuel were the United Kingdom (123 Mtce) and West Germany (119 Mtce), although the relative dependence upon solid fuel was highest in Turkey, where 46 percent of the country's energy needs were supplied by coal and lignite (Table 8-2). In the same year, by contrast, the Italian economy used solid fuel to meet only 7 percent of its energy requirements, and the counterpart Netherlands' figure was less than 5 percent. This pattern of consumption reflected in considerable