France has relatively small Coal reserves of 40 million short tons (Mmst). France's coal sector has declined steadily over the past several decades, as cheaper imports have replaced domestic sources. In 2002, France only produced 2.3 Mmst of coal. The state-owned coal monopoly, Charbonnages de France, closed its last production facility in April 2004. There have been some plans by foreign companies to resume coal production in France; in late 2004, ATH, a large British coal producer, announced that it would resume production at the Bertholene coal concession in south-central France by 2006.
Coal has become a less important part of France's energy supply, constituting only 5% of French total energy consumption in 2002. Nuclear power has replaced most of France's coal-fired power plants. Nevertheless, France still consumed 22.9 Mmst of coal in 2002, the seventh-most of the EU's 25 member countries, with the largest sources of France's coal imports coming from South Africa, Australia, and the United States. The few remaining coal-fired power plants represented about half of France's coal consumption in 2002, with most of the remainder consumed by the steel industry.
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