Abstract：With increasing large-scale exploration of coal resources, coal reserves have been reduced year by year, and outcrop and shallow ore deposits are diminishing day by day, particularly in eastern China. Therefore, the main exploration targets should be focused on concealed or blind coal deposits whose detection and exploration are rather difficult, and modern remote sensing and geographic information system technology can play an important role in this aspect. Based on coal-prospecting practice in the past, this paper describes the methods and problems of remote sensing for coal exploration, and puts forward some new ideas: analyzing a variety of geographical attributes, surface properties, geophysical and geochemical exploration, geological drilling results and remote sensing image data and using new remote sensing data with multi-band, multi-polarization, multi-angle, multi-temporal and multi-resolution characteristics to investigate geological setting and mineralization regularity and extract coal information in depth.