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But for all the headlines about oil prices and climate change, the most important energy story -indeed, the energy story of the last four decades-has been the growth in global coal demand. In a December'2014 report, the International Energy Agency releases its annual report on the coal market. Their findings: global coal prices are falling and coal demand is rising. Since 1973, no other form of energy has grown faster than coal. And the IEA expects that coal demand will continue growing through 2019 by more than 2 percent per year. Perhaps even more astounding is the IEA's projection that by 2019 pr sp, on a BTU basis, global coal use will exceed global oil use. Why is coal demand growing? The answer is simple: the countries of the world need cheap electricity and coal is the perfect fuel for producing that power with relatively better security. Coal is her to stay because, politicians and investors understand that coal can provide the vast quantities of electricity their people need at prices they can afford. And in all these, underground mining of coal will play a role. In spite of its growing importance, underground mining engineering of coal has not got the attention it deserves. This book is a recent treatise on the underground engineering of coal for extraction. It provides a compilation of the recent knowledge in the area.