Coal is a valuable and plentiful natural resource found in Canada and around the world. Far more abundant than crude oil or natural gas, coal has been used by humans for over 4,000 years.

In the past, coal kept our ancestors warm and helped fuel our industrial development. Today, it generates much of our electricity, helps produce most of the world's steel and is used in other industrial processes like cement making. In the future, coal will continue to play a significant role in the energy mix for power generation.

Coal started out in the form of tropical and subtropical plants, alive at the same time as the dinosaurs. When these plants died and decayed in swamps, they became layers of peat. Inland seas, formed during the melting of the Ice Age, covered the peat with sediment. As this layer of sediment built up, it put pressure upon the peat. This pressure, in combination with high temperatures, transformed the peat into coal.

Scientists estimate that it took about eight metres of compacted vegetation to produce one metre of coal. To put that in perspective, if you filled a room in your home to the ceiling with vegetation, compacted it, added heat and waited...and waited...and waited...you would get about 30 centimetres of coal.

Most of the steel for today's cars, bicycles, ships and buildings is produced using coal created from long dead plants. If you live where electricity is generated from coal, your computer could be powered by coal that was formed from decomposed grass once nibbled on by a Stegosaurus!