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Japan utilities burn record thermal coal in August

Japan’s regional power monopolies consumed record volumes of thermal coal last month to generate electricity amid a complete shutdown of the nation’s 48 nuclear reactors, industry data showed on Friday.
Coal use totalled 5.71 million tonnes, up 0.3 percent from a year earlier, data from Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan showed.
The utilities used 4.84 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) equivalent last month, down 3.8 percent, due to sluggish power demand amid cooler summer weather.
They generated 79.03 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity last month, down 7.9 percent from a year earlier.
Japan’s nuclear regulator on Wednesday approved the restart of a nuclear power station, the first step to reopening an industry that has been idle since the Fukushima disaster in 2011, but the plant’s restart is not expected until 2015.
Below is a table of total energy usage and purchases by the 10 regional utilities last month, with the amount for crude, fuel oil and naphtha in barrels and those for LNG and coal in tonnes.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Himani Sarkar)