Does Coal Have a Future?

The History of Coal as a Fuel and its Prospects in the 21st Century Of all the types of hydrocarbons, coal has been in use the longest. China is known to have extracted coal as early as the 4 th century B.C. Unlike oil, coal has historically been used in everyday ... ... Despite the fact that Russia exports significant volumes of coal, it also imports between 20 and 25 million tonnes annually from Kazakhstan for electricity generation purposes in several cities across the Urals. It is cheaper to import coal from Kazakhstan ...