Presenting at the Howard Weil 2012 Energy conference in New Orleans, Boyce said China's economic growth exceeded targets every single year this century and he expected metallurgical coal growth to be 40% this decade.

He said Peabody was expanding both met and thermal coal exports from Australia to serve high-growth Pacific markets, targeting 8-11 million tonnes of additional volume in 2012, with more in 2013.

"While concerns about the global economy make headlines, recent data support the coal supercycle thesis for both met and thermal coal," Boyce said.

"Chinese steel production is coming off of trough levels set in November 2011.

“China just announced 20 million tonnes of coal imports in February and the last four months of coal imports are up more than 40 per cent from prior-year levels.

“India's thermal coal imports rose 35 per cent in 2011 and last week the country moved to eliminate its coal import tariff."

Boyce said while China’s growth targets were between 7% and 8%, the actual performance averaged nearly three percentage points higher, with actual growth of up to 14% per year.

“China is now a global economic power with a much larger base than last decade,” he said.

“So even the targeted 7.5 per cent GDP increase in 2012 would be greater economic growth than a 13 per cent GDP increase in 2006.

"China's GDP largely tracks its generation growth, which in turn translates into higher coal use.

“Coal use consistently exceeds targets.

“During the 10th five-year plan, 1.1 billion tonnes of coal use was targeted for the last year while 2.3 billion tonnes were actually consumed.

“During the 11th five-year plan, 2.5 billion tonnes of coal use was targeted for the last year and 3.5 billion tonnes were consumed.

“If you assume 8.5% economic growth, China's 2015 coal consumption would reach 5 billion tonnes.

"Coal-fuelled power rose 14 per cent last year, driving a similar increase in net coal imports.

“In 2012, domestic coal production is targeted to increase just 3.7 per cent while generation growth is targeted at double that rate.

“We believe that China's net coal imports could exceed 300 million tonnes per year by 2016."

If India, Brazil and China reached a traditional level of maturity in the steel intensity of more developed countries, global metallurgical coal use would more than double and add 1.2Bt of annual consumption.

“We believe there will be continued structural shortages for metallurgical coal particularly at the high end of the quality scale ... for both coking coals and PCI products," Boyce said.

Turning to thermal coal, China and India are leading the global build-out of coal-fuelled generation, Boyce said.

“Over the next five years, we see generation growing 370 gigawatts ... and that requires more than 1.2 billion tonnes of additional coal," he said.

“To put this in perspective, this is equivalent to one new 500-megawatt power plant every three days ... through 2016.”

Boyce said there were coal supply constraints to meet the growing demand.

"We see major coal supply constraints around the world,” he said.

“Domestic production in China is experiencing higher costs, declining metallurgical coal qualities and a long haul for thermal coal as the supply base moves to the north and west over time.

“India faces major production issues and rapidly growing coal imports.

“Ownership and domestic market obligations affect both Indonesia and South African coal exports.

“Infrastructure challenges impact many of the exporting nations, whether due to remote mining locations such as Mongolia ... or rail and port access that isn't keeping up with demand in places such as Australia, Canada and the US west coast."