This 600bn-tonne discovery has the makings of a remarkable story

Tom Bulford looks at a process for exploiting prevously uneconomic coal reserves. Potentially one of the most exciting energy stories of the next few years.

Coal gets a lot of bad press. It's dirty. It's dangerous to mine. And it can seriously disrupt the climate in vulnerable parts of the world. So when the World Energy Council recently announced that it was lifting its estimates of global coal reserves from 900 million to 1.5 billion tonnes, not everyone was thrilled.

But here's the thing. The World Energy Council had not just stumbled upon a vast new coal seam. It has known all along that there is more coal. There has just never been a way to exploit it.

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Tom worked as a fund manager in the City of London and in Hong Kong for over 20 years. As a director with Schroder Investment Management International he was responsible for £2 billion of foreign clients' money, and launched what became Argentina's largest mutual fund. Now working from his home in Oxfordshire, Tom Bulford helps private investors with his premium tipping newsletter, Red Hot Biotech Alert.