The Emergence of Anthracite Coal, Its Rise and Fall

Eugen Wendler ()

Chapter Chapter 6 in Friedrich List as a Railway Pioneer in the USA, 2021, pp 37-40 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The next chapter examines the origin of anthracite coal, its rise and fall in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly with regard to the USA. Anthracite coal was created in the carboniferous period about 300 million years ago. In this geological era, the climate was very warm and humid. Huges jungles of horsetails, ferns and lepidodendron trees grew on swampy soil at that time. When the plants and trees died or their leaves fell, the organic material fell into the swampy and sank in the morass. Because it was closed off from air, it did not rot, but was transformed into a peat-like layer on whch new vegetation grew. Since the 1970s, coal has been in continuous decline as a source of electricity and has been replaced by other fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas and today is increasingly being replaced by renewable energy sources, such as solarenergy and hydropower.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-658-34526-6_6

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