“We’re trying to make those prudent investments to position ourselves to be able to move forward more quickly than others,” he said.

The Australian portfolio puts Peabody ahead of peers without global reach, because the U.S. picture is dim.

“Domestically, we’re not expecting any growth in coal,” said Jeff Archibald, a senior technical specialist at consulting firm ICF International. “There’s no new coal plants coming online. The domestic market is flat to down. There’s no rosy picture at the end of the tunnel.”

Internationally, though, ICF predicts coal consumption will grow at 2.5 percent to 3 percent a year through 2020, and China has said its carbon emissions won’t peak until 2030.

“That’s still a lot of time and a lot of potential growth,” Archibald said.

Boyce acknowledged that coal growth will be different in different parts of the world, particularly as industrial economies shift to service economies. But it is an essential component to economic growth, he said.

“If we want to have growing economies, we need to have access to affordable and available energy,” he said. “Coal has to be a foundation for that. Always has been and always will be.”

The International Energy Agency predicts global coal growth at around 2.3 percent a year. But it warned that is not sustainable.

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