With the cost of high quality coal locally quite low, I think it is worth considering to sequester some at key locations nearby, as well as try to find a use for it here at home.

I've got stores of other fuels, such as kerosene, gas, propane, wood, etc, but the price per btu for these is all significantly higher than the coal I could buy. From a survival perspective, a good supply of cheap coal seems like a good idea. It should weather well, it is portable, it should be safer than most other forms to use, and there's lots of it here. It may not be as useful as gases or liquids for running motors, but I've seen some residential designs that include a sterling engine pto off the main combustion chamber.

Down on the peninsula, people pick coal up off the shoreline as erosion exposes shallow veins. I guess being exposed to seawater makes it stinky when it burns, but it still works for heat.

Just a thought.

Coal is great for a makeshift forging furnace building.

The coal up there is in the middle of the range of maturity - sub-bituminous. Worst to best: peat/lignite/sub-bituminous/bituminous/anthracite. It will be really dirty/smudgy I would guess. But, as a backup it would probably suffice.

When I camped on the Homer Spit for a week, there were small boulders (3'x2'x1.5') of the stuff all over the beach. By the way, it rained for 4.5 days out of 5 that I was on the beach.

The quality may depend on the location. Apparently Alaskan coal ranges from anthracite (great stove coal) to sub-bituminous or thermal coal (scurvy stuff for stoves unless they use a forced draft). Reference: http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-077/dds77text.html#heading154533232 .

Stored coal needs to be dried and kept as dry as possible, otherwise it will break down into dust over time, and that is really hard to make use of. Wet coal is problematic, obviously, because even if you can get it to burn, most of the heat energy goes up the flue as steam.

Storage location and method also has to account for coal's tendency to self-combust. I haven't had a problem storing it in closed pails in a shed, but power plants with coal piles exposed to the wind monitor them closely for evidence of combustion.

Then there's the challenge of a stove that will burn coal well. Wood stoves don't supply enough draft/oxygen, and the intense localized heat can cause serious damage. I imagine some sort of insert could be cobbled together in a pinch.

The bonus of a coal-fired stove is that the flue runs very cool and doesn't deposit creosote. And, if you use large lumps and know what you're doing, you can bank a fairly small stove to keep a cabin toasty all night. (A CO detector would be a good idea since heated coal produces oodles of it, and a partially blocked flue could lead to a very long sleep indeed.)

Agree that coal is cheap, easy and safe to store, and contains a lot of energy.

As you mention the present low price, I presume that you are considering purchase rather than scavenging ?

Here in the UK "smokeless fuel" is widely sold, this is coal that has been treated to remove most of the volatiles and thus allow it to burn with very little smoke.

Most woodburning stoves will burn this fuel with fair success and it is also excellent with a forced draft for blacksmithing work in a forge.

In any serious emergency, smoke from a fire or stove might attract most unwelcome attention. Smokeless fuel is preferable to real coal in this respect.

It harder to ignite than real coal, ensure that you have plenty of kindling or manufactured fire lighters.

If smokeless fuel is available affordably in your district then I would buy some.
In the UK it is sold in sacks each holding 25KG, often packed 40 sacks to a pallet for a metric ton of fuel.

Interesting, I hadn't heard of smokeless coal. It looks like coal that has been put through a coking process and then pressed into briquettes with a binder added to the mix.

(It occurs to me that the el cheapo barbecue briquettes I tried once were made from coal -- that would explain the price, and the flavour. Never again.)

To reiterate, though: a modern airtight wood burning stove will not burn coal well, and doing so will void the warranty. A grate and an additional layer of protection below would have to be added to take the intense localized heat. The door would probably have to be cracked open the entire time. I have no idea what the effect on a catalytic wood burner would be. (The good news is that antique coal/wood stoves can be had for a song, even free; but no building code or insurance company would allow them in a residence.)

You are in good company.

China is storing megatonnes of coal in the ocean as a strategic reserve and has done so for years enlarging islands and producing new ones.

Coal storage

Yes smokeless coal is indeed natural coal that has been put through a coking process, though at a lower temperature than true coke. In fact, an old name for it is "semi coke"
Some types are pressed into regular size briquettes, others retain the random shapes of small lumps of coal.

Here in the UK, multifuel stoves are very popular. They are primarily designed to burn logs, but can also burn smokeless coal, but NOT real coal.
The grate of these stoves is adjustable, for wood burning the grate bars are virtually touching so as to give a simulation of a solid surface. When burning smokeless coal, the grate bars have gaps between so as to give a good draft and permit of the ashes falling through to the ash pan.
A separate damper supplies combustion air via the ash pan to the underside of the grate, this should be kept shut when burning logs, but should be partly or even fully open when burning smokeless coal.

I have a small stove of this sort and normally burn logs, but keep a couple of tons of smokeless coal in reserve for emergencies. For a given energy content the smokeless coal takes up less storage space than logs which is a consideration if keeping a large supply.

store what you use, use what you store...
if you're buying fuel might as well buy a stove
(or build one) that will burn it clean

as for storage, avoid house sized piles, avoid rain

My thinking was to get a coal burning stove and stock about 4 tons a year (what I estimate I would have to go through up here during the cold season).

For the retreat, I was thinking maybe a connex box or two full of coal would be a good fallback. Just make sure they are not leaky and fairly secure. 40 tons of coal would last quite a while that way.

Coal Gun Stoker for home

This system looks promising. The local coal supplier described their coal as a high quality anthracite and sized for this system. Seems pretty straightforward. I'll have to look into costs and installation issues.