List of countries by coal reserves

All data are taken from the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) via BP; all numbers are in million tonnes.

[1] However BP no longer publishes coal reserves and the Energy Institute did not update the figures in 2023.

Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements; chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.

[3] As a fossil fuel burned for heat, coal supplies about a quarter of the world's primary energy and two-fifths of its electricity.

Unlike "resources", which is the amount that could technically be extracted, according to BP "total proved reserves of coal" is "generally taken to be those quantities that geological and engineering information indicates with reasonable certainty can be recovered in the future from known reservoirs under existing economic and operating conditions".