The nation's leading coal lobbyist yesterday said the fossil fuel blamed for much of the world's industrial air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions will remain the backbone of global energy supply as electricity demand continues to rise over the coming decades.

Hal Quinn, president of the National Mining Association, in an address to the U.S. Energy Association's annual State of the Energy Industry Forum, even credited coal for being a vehicle for good in the world.

"For the developing countries, coal is the driving force behind the world's most transformative action -- lifting humanity out of poverty," he told the Washington, D.C., audience, according to a transcript of his comments released by NMA.

Quinn's optimism for coal -- coming amid overall declining burn rates at U.S. electric utilities that have switched to natural gas and other fuels -- was buttressed by data from Wood Mackenzie indicating that coal will surpass oil as the world's leading energy source by no later than 2015.

Such projections are based in part on China's and India's continued voracious appetite for coal to make electricity and steel, along with the development of newer, more efficient and less polluting coal-fired power plants in the United States, Europe and Asia.

"As much as we marvel at the pace of urbanization in China, the growth rates for cities in other countries are equally impressive," Quinn said. For example, he noted that both Germany and Japan are looking to increase coal-fired electricity generation to offset the retirements of nuclear plants and the high costs of alternative fuels like natural gas.

India, meanwhile, is projected to increase its coal-fired power portfolio from today's 65 percent of total generation to as much 80 percent of generation by 2025, he said. "Just bringing the city of Mumbai [population 13 million] to our level of cooling would equal the air conditioning needs of the entire U.S.," he said.

Such geopolitical factors, he said, make U.S. policies that prohibit the construction of new coal plants misguided. "If we want to compete with the fastest-growing economies that are being powered by coal, we better keep all of our energy options on the playing field," he said.

Yet even with U.S. regulatory and economic pressures working against coal, its resilience at home is supported by two factors, Quinn said.

First, a new generation of advanced coal-fired plants will achieve higher output rates with lower overall emissions. Second, as older, less-efficient coal plants are retired, the U.S. power plant fleet will on average become larger and more efficient and run at higher capacity.

That increased capacity at large plants will help recover at least 100 million tons of coal consumption lost to the retirements of older plants, he said.