coal?

[ceti331]

in a recent argument about peak oil someone claimed to me that the UK has "abundant coal reserves"

I'd read somewhere that UK coal production is down to something like ballpark 10% of a peak back in 1913, which would seem more in line with the reality of declining industry and so on.

Is there any truth to the claim ?

was coal production reduced to allow us to consume cheap foreign coal in exchange for IOUs (later inflateable away) whilst we kept a strategic reserve...

.. or is that just BS, its like any other resource where the deeper you dig the more energy it takes to extract, the EROEI is lower, the high quality coal is gone and what remains is low quality etc

I imagine most people here believe AGW - this was also on a predominantly AGW denier forum - coal is a lot more polluting than oil, right ? it might not even be safe to use anyway?

(i keep trying to point out to those people that we discovered pollution problems from fossil fuel burning very early on in the industrial age.. smog ..)

[adam2]

Depends on what is meant by "abundant"

UK coal reserves are almost certainly greater than oil reserves if measured in terms of energy content.

UK coal mining was run down many years ago as it was cheaper to import coal for power station use, and natural gas was also cheap.

Coal burning for domestic heating and by heavy industry was much reduced, coal use for town gas production had ceased leaving power stations as the only large coal users.

Some closed coal mines could be re-opened if desired, but I rather doubt that this will happen.
Coal is a very carbon intensive fuel, and use should therefore be minimised.
Deep coal mines provide unpleasant and dangerous employment, and open cast mining is a blot on the landscape. The expansion of either is likely to be opposed.

Under EU directives large coal burning power plants have a limited future life and it is unlikely that any more will be built.

Coal burning for domestic heating may increase, and IF coal is to be burnt at all, better at about 70% efficiency in a modern stove, than at about 30% efficiency in a power station to supply electric heating.

The volumes are likely to be relatively small and easily supplied from our present very limited coal production.

[biffvernon]

I don't think there will be any development of coal mining in terms of people digging up lumps of coal in the old fashioned way. What could happen if the climate deniers were to have their way is UCG - underground coal gasification. Basically, the coal is partially burnt underground and the resulting gasses, carbon monoxide, methane, etc are captured for use.

The potential resource is big and, I hope, will never be exploited.

[emordnilap]

The potential resource is big and, I hope, will never be exploited.

So do I but it all depends on the price people are willing to pay. The veneer of sympathy for others most people possess is, sadly, rather thin.

[ceti331]

deep mining = unpleasant work - I'd wholeheartedly agree and I certainly wouldn't want to depend on people having to do that

is there any chance advances in technology can "unlock" this resource ? (robot minin, 'cleaner burning' if there is such a thing..


My perception of the environmental issue is basically that the combustion is the other side of a photosynthetic coin ... its like you're drawing down the oxygen if the combustion isn't offset by an equivalent amount of photosynthesis... so really we're limited by what plants can do

Is there any hope of greening the deserts to the extend needed

i doubt we're going to improve plants ability to photosynthesize

[PS_RalphW]

As far as running out of oxygen, I don't think you need worry. The atmosphere is about 200,000 ppm oxygen, and we have used about 200 ppm of it so far burning fossil fuels.

We will cook long before we poison ourselves with CO2, which would happen long before we ran out of oxygen to make it.

[emordnilap]

Shurely we need more CO2? Don't they use it on fires? Pump it out - and drought/heatwave-related forest fires are no more. Hey presto!

[ceti331]

ok oxygen reserves are 'very large', but its the idea we're using it outside of a cycle that convinces me producing CO2 without it being recycled back to O2 is basically a problem.

i guess its if we started bringing back hydrocarbons from other planets to burn in our atmosphere (or if it really was 'bubbling up from the mantle' LOL) that drawing down oxygen would be a problem

[kenneal - lagger]

As mentioned above, In Situ Coal Gasification will be the way that deep coal is removed from the ground in future. Fracking the seams for methane may precede it but eventually we will go down the ISCG route unless the whole economic system breaks first. Any politician who says that gas will replace coal is a liar because politicians don't have the bottle to close down a big industry.

There might be limited use for ISGS gas because it is basically the old town gas and has a different calorific value to natural gas. We would have to change all our burners again so it might be restricted to power stations.

[adam2]

Robots for coal mining are certainly a longer term possibility, thereby freeing humans from an unpleasant and dangerous job. I dont beieve that present robots are up to the job.

That still leaves pollution from coal burning.
"clean burning" means different things to different people, coal can already be burnt with good efficiency and almost no smoke in a modern power station or domestic stove.
That leaves the carbon dioxide emmisions, there is no simple war around that problem. The carbon dioxide can be extracted from the flue gases and pumped into empty oil or gas reservoirs, this has been been demonstrated on a small scale. It unfortunatly adds so much cost and complexity that large scale application seems unlikely.

Wind, solar, tidal, or nuclear power are almost certainly cheaper than robotic coal mining AND equiping power stations with carbon capture and storage (CCCS).

Carbon emissions from coal burning can be halved right now by simply burning the coal in a modern stove or boiler rather than use of electric heating from a coal power station.

[biffvernon]

Oh do stop this silly discussion. We have already agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 under the Kyoto Protocol and we already know that this is insufficient to prevent catastrophic global warming. Any further exploitation of new carbon sources has to be off everybody's agendas.

[fuzzy]

I can't see any politicians voluntarily reducing our CO2 emissions by 80% whatever they said last week.

[biffvernon]

And yet a remarkable number of heads of state have signed their countries up to the Kyoto Protocol. Almost all countries actually, including the UK and all of the EU. USA did not ratify and Canada pulled out. South Sudan and Andorra are the other two that somehow got left out.

[kenneal - lagger]

We will end up in the position of having to reduce our emissions by 80% by 2050 in 2049 at the current rate of reduction.

[biffvernon]

Indeed. This is the key diagram, with area under the curve being critical. It will be easier to achieve the goal if we start sooner.



(I think it was someone at Potsdam who first drew it.)