With increasing large-scale exploration of coal resources, coal reserves are reducing year by year, and outcrop and shallow ore deposits are diminishing day by day, particularly in eastern China. 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.