An Analysis of Subterranean Coal Fire and its...
Transcript of An Analysis of Subterranean Coal Fire and its...
Chapter IV
A n Analysis of Subterranean Coal Fire and its
Effects
41 Coal 127
42 Coal Mining 127
43 Etymology 128
44 Types of Coal 128
45 Early Use 129
46 Present Usage 130
461 Coal as Fuel 130
462 Coking and Use of Coke 132
463 Gasification 132
464 Liquefaction 134
47 Harmful Effect 136
471 Coal Mining 136
472 Coal Burning 137
473 Energy Density 139
474 Coal Fires 140
48 World Coal Reserves 141
49 Major Coal Exporters 148
410 History of Coal Mining 149
4101 Early History 149 125
4102 Coal Mines in USA-1900 149
4103 The Industrial Revolution 150
4104 Beginning of 20 Century 151
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization 152
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World 154
4111 Britain 154
4112 USA 157
4113 Canada 160
4114 Germany 160
4115 Belgium 161
412 Disasters 162
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace
Organization of Various Coal Producing Countries 162
414 Subterranean Coal Fire 164
126
Chapter IV
An Analysis of Subterranean Coal Fire and its Effects 41 Coal
Solid usually black but sometimes brown carbon rich material that
occurs in stratified solid material deposits One of the most important
Fossil Fuels it is found in many parts of the world Coal is formed
by heat and pressure over millions of years on vegetation deposited in ancient
shallow swamps or peat organic fuel consisting of a light spongy material
formed in temperate humid environments by the accumulation and partial
decomposition of vegetable remains under conditions of poor drainage Peat
deposit is the first step in the formation of coal Dried peat bums readily with
a smoky flame and a characteristic odor It is used for domestic heating and
can be used to fire boilers It is only a major contributor to the world energy
supply but large deposits occur in Canada China Indonesia Russia
Scandinavia and the US Major users include Finland Ireland Russia and
Sweden It varies in density porosity hardness and reflectivity The major
types are Lignite Sub-bituminous Bituminous and Anthracite Coal has long
been used in synthesizing dyes solvents and drugs The search for alternative
energy source has periodically revived interests in the conversion of coal into
liquid fuels Technology for coal liquification has been known early in the
20 century
42 Coal Mining
Extraction of coal deposits from the Earths surface and from
underground Because coal was the basic energy source that fueled the
Industrial Revolution the resulting industrial growth supported the large-scale
1 Encyclopedia Britannica (Ready reference) Vol-1 EB (India) PLtd New Delhi p 273
127
underground mines as the principal source of coal was in the Industrial
nations The mining of coal from surface and underground deposits today is
highly productive mechanical operation
43 Etymology
The word coal is of Aryan origin and appears in many Germanic
languages (German language Kohle Swedish language kol Hindi Language
Koyla)^ also giving the name for element carbon in those languagesmdash
charcoal is wood rendered to carbon and carbonic compounds by pyrolysis
charring)
44 Types of coal
As geological processes apply pressure to peat over time it is transformed
successively into
bull Lignite - also referred to as brown coal is the lowest rank of coal and
used almost exclusively as fuel for steam-electric power generation Jet
is a compact form of lignite that is sometimes polished and has been
used as an ornamental stone since the Iron Age
bull Sub-bituminous coal - whose properties range from those of lignite to
those of bituminous coal and are used primarily as fuel for steam-
electric power generation
bull Bituminous coal - a dense coal usually black sometimes dark brown
often with well-defined bands of bright and dull material used
primarily as fuel in steam-electric power generation with substantial
2 Ibid Vol-2 p 223 3 Oxford English Dictionary 1989 edition
128
quantities also used for heat and power applications in manufacturing
and to make coke
bull Anthracite - the highest rank a harder glossy black coal used
primarily for residential and commercial space heating
bull Graphite - technically the highest rank but difficult to ignite and is not
so commonly used for ignition
45 Early Use
Outcrop coal was used in Britain during the Bronze Age where it has
been detected as forming part of the composition of funeral pyres It was also
commonly used in the early period of the Roman occupation Evidence of
trade in coal has been found at the inland port of Heronbridge near Chester
and in the Fenlands of East Anglia where coal from the Midlands was
transported via the Car Dyke for use in drying grain Coal cinders have been
found in the hearths of villas and military forts particularly in
Northumberland dated around AD400 In the west of England contemporary
writers described the wonder of a permanent brazier of coal on the altar of
Minerva at Aquae Suits (modem day Bath) although in fact easily-accessible
surface coal from what is now the Somerset coalfield was in common use in Q
quite lowly dwelUngs locally
However there is no evidence that the product was of great importance
in Britain before the High Middle Ages after about AD 1000 Mineral coal
came to be referred to as sea-coal probably because it came to many places
in eastern England including London by sea This is accepted as the more
3000 years BC Britannica 2004 Coal mining ancient use of outcropping coal ^ Dated to about AD200 Salway Peter A History of Roman Britain (2001) Oxford University Press p 314 ^ Forbes RJ Studies in Ancient Technology 1966 Brill Academic Publishers Boston p 128
129
likely explanation for the name than that it was found on beaches having
fallen from the exposed coal seams above or washed out of underwater coal
seam outcrops These easily accessible sources had largely become exhausted
(or could not meet the growing demand) by the 13th century when
underground mining from shafts or adits was developed^ In London there is
still a Sea-coal Lane (off the north side of Ludgate Hill) where the coal
merchants used to conduct their business An alternative name was pit-coal
because it came from mines It was however the development of the
Industrial Revolution that led to the large-scale use of coal as the steam
engine took over from the water wheeldeg
46 Present Usage
Coal is used in different forms and in different purposes
461 Coal as Fuel
Coal is primarily used as a solid fuel to produce electricity and heat
through combustion World coal consumption is about 53 billion tons
annually of which about 75 is used for the production of electricity The
region including the Peoples Republic of China and India uses about 17
billion tonnes annually forecast to exceed 27 billion tonnes in 2025 The
USA consumes about 10 billion tons of coal each year using 90 of it for
generation of electricity Coal is the fastest growing energy source in the
See Supra note 3 Phillip A Lowe Wilburn C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi (1976) Technical Economies Synfuels and
Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process The American Society of Mechanical Engineers Publications USA p 110
Data published by International Energy Outlook September 9 2005 which made an exhaustive survey on energy consumption and the probable future demand
130
world accounting for 42 of the increase in energy used for the three years 1 9
ending December 2004
When coal is used for electricity generation it is usually pulverized and
then burned in a furnace with a boiler The furnace heat converts boiler water
to steam which is then used to spin turbines which turn generators and create
electricity The thermodynamic efficiency of this process has been improved
over time Standard steam turbines have topped out with some of the most
advanced reaching about 35 thermodynamic efficiency for the entire
process which means 65 of the coal energy is rejected as waste heat into
the surrounding environment Old coal power plants especially
grandfathered plants are significantly less efficient and reject higher levels
of waste heat The emergence of the supercritical turbine concept envisions
running a boiler at extremely high temperatures and pressures with projected
efficiencies of 46 with further theorized increases in temperature and
pressure perhaps resulting in even higher efficiencies^ Approximately 40
of the world electricity production uses coal The total known deposits
recoverable by current technologies including highly polluting low energy
content types of coal might be sufficient for 300 years use at current
consumption levels although maximal production could be reached within
decades A more energy-efficient way of using coal for electricity production
would be via solid-oxide fuel cells or molten-carbonate fuel cells (or any
oxygen ion transport based fuel cells that do not discriminate between fiiels
as long as they consume oxygen) which would be able to get 60-85
~ Ibid World Primary Energy Production by Source 1970-2004 lthttpwwwpowergenerationsiemenscomdownloadpoolPGE2005_BalancingEconomicspdfgt Article Balancing economics and environmental friendliness ~ the challenge for supercritical coal-fired power plants with highest steam parameters in the future Retrieved on 2006-10-23 ie lignite bituminous
131
combined efficiency (direct electricity + waste heat steam turbine) Currently
these fuel cell technologies can only process gaseous fuels and they are also
sensitive to sulfur poisoning issues which would first have to be worked out
before large scale commercial success is possible with coal As far as gaseous
fuels go one idea is pulverized coal in a gas carrier such as nitrogen Another
option is coal gasification with water which may lower fuel cell voltage by
introducing oxygen to the fuel side of the electrolyte but may also greatly
simplify carbon sequestration
462 Coking and Use of Coke
Coke is a solid carbonaceous residue derived from low-ash low-sulfur
bituminous coal from which the volatile constituents are driven off by baking
in an oven without oxygen at temperatures as high as 1000 degC so that the
fixed carbon and residual ash are fused together Metallurgic coke is used as a
fuel and as a reducing agent in smelting iron ore in a blast furnace Coke from
coal is grey hard and porous and has a heating value of 248million
Btuton Byproducts of this conversion of coal to coke include coal tar
ammonia light oils and coal gas Petroleum coke is the solid residue
obtained in oil refining which resembles coke but contains too many
impurities to be useful in metallurgical applications
463 Gasification
High prices of oil and natural gas are leading to increased interest in
BTU Conversion technologies such as gasification methanation and
liquefaction Coal gasification breaks down the coal into its components
Data based on Robert H Williams and Eric D Larson A Comparison of Direct and Indirect Liquefaction Technologies for Making Fluid Fuels from Coal Article appeared in Energy for Sustainable Development Vol-VII London
16 J g32 op
296 MJkg 132
usually by subjecting it to high temperature and pressure using steam and
measured amounts of oxygen This leads to the production of syngas a 1 0
mixture mainly consisting of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2)
In the past coal was converted to make coal gas which was piped to
customers to bum for illumination heating and cooking At present the safer
natural gas is used instead South Africa still uses gasification of coal for
much of its petrochemical needs
The Synthetic Fuels Corporation was a US government-funded
corporation established in 1980 to create a market for alternatives to imported
fossil fuels (such as coal gasification) The corporation was discontinued in
1985^
Gasification is also a possibility for future energy use as the produced
syngas can be cleaned-up relatively easily leading to cleaner burning than
burning coal directly (the conventional way) The cleanliness of the cleaned-
up syngas is comparable to natural gas enabling to bum it in a more efficient
gas turbine rather than in a boiler used to drive a steam turbine Syngas
produced by gasification can be CO-shifled meaning that the combustible CO
in the Syngas is transferred into carbon dioxide (CO2) using water as a
reactant The CO-shift reaction also produces an amount of combustible
hydrogen (H2) equal to the amount of CO converted into CO2 The CO2
concentrations (or rather CO2 partial pressures) obtained by using coal
gasification followed by a CO-shift reaction are much higher than in case of
direct combustion of coal in air (which is mostly nitrogen) These higher
See supra note 15 Ibid
133
concentrations of carbon dioxide make carbon capture and storage much more
economical than it otherwise would be
464 Liquefaction
Coal can also be converted into liquid fuels like gasoline or diesel by
several different processes The Fischer-Tropsch process of indirect synthesis
of liquid hydrocarbons was used in Nazi Germany for many years and is
today used by Sasol in South Africa Coal would be gasified to make syngas
(a balanced purified mixture of CO and H2 gas) and the syngas condensed
using Fischer-Tropsch catalysts to make light hydrocarbons which are further
processed into gasoline and diesel Syngas can also be converted to methanol
which can be used as a fuel fuel additive or further processed into gasoline
via the Mobil M-gas process
A direct liquefaction process Bergius process (liquefaction by
hydrogenation) is also available but has not been used outside Germany
where such processes were operated both during World War I and World War
II SASOL in South Africa has experimented with direct hydrogenation
Several other direct liquefaction processes have been developed among these
being the SRC-I and SRC-II (Solvent Refined Coal) processes developed by
Gulf Oil and implemented as pilot plants in the United States in the 1960s and
1970s Another direct hydrogenation process was explored by the NUS
Corporation in 1976 and patented by Wilburn C Schroeder The process
involved dried pulverized coal mixed with roughly lwt molybdenum
catalysis Hydrogenation occurred by use of high temperature and pressure
synthesis gas produced in a separate gasifier The process ultimately yielded a
For detailed discussion see generally lthttpwwwpowergenerationorggt retrieved on 25-12-2(X)7 Data based on Cleaner Coal Technology Programme (October 1999) Technology Status Report 01 Oshy
Coal Liquefaction Department of Trade and Industry (UK) Published by UK Government Press London
134
synthetic crude product Naptha a limited amount of C3C4 gas light-medium
weight liquids (C5-C10) suitable for use as fuels small amounts of NH3 and
significant amounts of C02
Yet another process to manufacture liquid hydrocarbons from coal is
Low Temperature Carbonization (LTC) Coal is coked at temperatures
between 450 and 700degC compared to 800deg to 1000degC for metallurgical coke
These temperatures optimize the production of coal tars richer in lighter
hydrocarbons than normal coal tar The coal tar is then further processed into
fuels The Karrick process was developed by Lewis C Karrick an oil shale
technologist at the US Bureau of Mines in the 1920s^^
All of these liquid fiiel production methods release carbon dioxide
(CO2) in the conversion process far more than is released in the extraction
and refinement of liquid fuel production from petroleum If these methods
were adopted to replace declining petroleum supplies carbon dioxide
emissions would be greatly increased on a global scale For future
liquefaction projects Carbon dioxide sequestration is proposed to avoid
releasing it into the atmosphere though no pilot projects have confirmed the
feasibility of this approach on a wide scale As CO2 is one of the process
streams sequestration is easier than from fuel gases produced in combustion
of coal with air where CO2 is diluted by nitrogen and other gases
Sequestration will however add to the cost
Coal liquefaction is one of the backstop technologies that could
potentially limit escalation of oil prices and mitigate the effects of
^ Data based on the article by Phillip A Lowe Wilbum C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi Technical
Economies Synfuels and Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process
(1976) The American Society of Mechanical Engineers USA
Ibid
^ See Supra note 21
135
transportation energy shortage that some authors have suggested could occur
under peak oil This is contingent on liquefaction production capacity
becoming large enough to satiate the very large and growing demand for
petroleum Estimates of the cost of producing liquid fuels from coal suggest
that domestic US production of fuel from coal becomes cost-competitive
with oil priced at around 35 USD per barrel (break-even cost) This price
while above historical averages is well below current oil prices This makes
coal a viable financial alternative to oil for the time being although
production is not great enough to make synfuels viable on a large scale
Among commercially mature technologies advantage for indirect coal
liquefaction over direct coal liquefaction are reported by Williams and Larson
(2003) Estimates are reported for sites in China where break-even cost for
coal liquefaction may be in the range between 25 to 35 USDbarrel of oil
47 Harmful Effects
Apart from the useful effects there are harmful effects also
471 Coal Mining
Coal mining causes a number of harmful effects When coal surfaces
are exposed pyrite (iron sulfide) also known as fools gold comes in
contact with water and air and forms sulfuric acid As water drains from the
mine the acid moves into the waterways and as long as rain falls on the mine
tailings the sulfuric acid production continues whether the mine is still
operating or not If the coal is strip mined the entire exposed seam leaChes
sulfuric acid leaving the infertile subsoil on the surface and begins to pollute
- ltwwwfindarticlesa)mparticlesgt retrieved on September 9 2007 ^Based on an article Welcome to Coal People Magazine appeared in the site ltwwwcoalindiacomgt
Retrieved on September 92007 Ibid
136
streams by acidifying and killing fish plants and aquatic animals that are
sensitive to drastic pH shifts
By the late 1930s it was estimated that American coal mines produced
about 23 million tonnes of sulfuric acid annually In the Ohio River Basin
where twelve hundred operating coal mines drained an estimated annual 14
million tonnes of sulfuric acid into the waters in the 1960s and thousands of
abandoned coal mines leached acid as well In Pennsylvania alone mine
drainage had blighted 2000 stream miles by 1967^^
472 Coal Burning
Combustion of coal like any other fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide
(CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) along with varying amounts of sulfur
dioxide (SO2) depending on where it was mined Sulfur dioxide reacts with
oxygen to form sulfur trioxide (SO3) which then reacts with water to form
sulfuric acid The sulfuric acid is returned to the Earth as acid rain Scrubbing
systems which use lime to remove the sulfur dioxide can reduce or eliminate
the likelihood of acid rain
Emissions from coal-fired power plants represent one of the two largest
sources of carbon dioxide emissions which have been implicated as the
primary cause of global warming Coal mining and abandoned mines also
emit methane another cause of global warming Since the carbon content of
coal is higher than oil burning coal is a more serious threat to the stability of
the global climate as this carbon forms CO2 when burned Many other
pollutants are present in coal power station emissions as solid coal is more
^ ltvwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 28-7-2007 ^ Ibid 30 Based on article by John Dyson Fire Down Below published in Readers Digest July 2004 For a
detailed discussion on the blunders of scientific assessments of ecological hazards see generally Michel Crichton State ofFear Harper Collins publishers 2007 Hammersmith London
137
difficult to clean than oil which is refined before use A study commissioned
by environmental groups claims that coal power plant emissions are
responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths annually in the United
States alone Modem power plants utilize a variety of techniques to limit the
harmfiikiess of their waste products and improve the efficiency of burning
though these techniques are not subject to standard testing or regulation in the
US and are not widely implemented in some countries as they add to the
capital cost of the power plant To eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants
carbon capture and storage has been proposed but has yet to be commercially
used
Coal and coal waste products including fly ash bottom ash boiler slag
and flue gas desulfurization contain many heavy metals including arsenic
lead mercury nickel vanadium beryllium cadmium barium chromium
copper molybdenum zinc selenium and radium which are dangerous if
released into the environment Coal also contains low levels of uranium
thorium and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into
the environment may lead to radioactive contamination While these
substances are trace impurities enough coal is burned that significant
amounts of these substances are released resulting in more radioactive waste
than nuclear power plants Mercury emissions fi-om coal burning are
concentrated as they work their way up the food chain and converted into
dangerous biological compounds that have made it dangerous to eat fish from
many waterways of the world Due to its scientifically accepted connection
Based on an Article Deadly power plants Study fuels debate appeared in site lthttpwwwnativevillageorgInspiration-Albuquerque20Conventionhtmgt Retrieved on September 4 2006
- Ibid Ibid
138
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
4102 Coal Mines in USA-1900 149
4103 The Industrial Revolution 150
4104 Beginning of 20 Century 151
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization 152
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World 154
4111 Britain 154
4112 USA 157
4113 Canada 160
4114 Germany 160
4115 Belgium 161
412 Disasters 162
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace
Organization of Various Coal Producing Countries 162
414 Subterranean Coal Fire 164
126
Chapter IV
An Analysis of Subterranean Coal Fire and its Effects 41 Coal
Solid usually black but sometimes brown carbon rich material that
occurs in stratified solid material deposits One of the most important
Fossil Fuels it is found in many parts of the world Coal is formed
by heat and pressure over millions of years on vegetation deposited in ancient
shallow swamps or peat organic fuel consisting of a light spongy material
formed in temperate humid environments by the accumulation and partial
decomposition of vegetable remains under conditions of poor drainage Peat
deposit is the first step in the formation of coal Dried peat bums readily with
a smoky flame and a characteristic odor It is used for domestic heating and
can be used to fire boilers It is only a major contributor to the world energy
supply but large deposits occur in Canada China Indonesia Russia
Scandinavia and the US Major users include Finland Ireland Russia and
Sweden It varies in density porosity hardness and reflectivity The major
types are Lignite Sub-bituminous Bituminous and Anthracite Coal has long
been used in synthesizing dyes solvents and drugs The search for alternative
energy source has periodically revived interests in the conversion of coal into
liquid fuels Technology for coal liquification has been known early in the
20 century
42 Coal Mining
Extraction of coal deposits from the Earths surface and from
underground Because coal was the basic energy source that fueled the
Industrial Revolution the resulting industrial growth supported the large-scale
1 Encyclopedia Britannica (Ready reference) Vol-1 EB (India) PLtd New Delhi p 273
127
underground mines as the principal source of coal was in the Industrial
nations The mining of coal from surface and underground deposits today is
highly productive mechanical operation
43 Etymology
The word coal is of Aryan origin and appears in many Germanic
languages (German language Kohle Swedish language kol Hindi Language
Koyla)^ also giving the name for element carbon in those languagesmdash
charcoal is wood rendered to carbon and carbonic compounds by pyrolysis
charring)
44 Types of coal
As geological processes apply pressure to peat over time it is transformed
successively into
bull Lignite - also referred to as brown coal is the lowest rank of coal and
used almost exclusively as fuel for steam-electric power generation Jet
is a compact form of lignite that is sometimes polished and has been
used as an ornamental stone since the Iron Age
bull Sub-bituminous coal - whose properties range from those of lignite to
those of bituminous coal and are used primarily as fuel for steam-
electric power generation
bull Bituminous coal - a dense coal usually black sometimes dark brown
often with well-defined bands of bright and dull material used
primarily as fuel in steam-electric power generation with substantial
2 Ibid Vol-2 p 223 3 Oxford English Dictionary 1989 edition
128
quantities also used for heat and power applications in manufacturing
and to make coke
bull Anthracite - the highest rank a harder glossy black coal used
primarily for residential and commercial space heating
bull Graphite - technically the highest rank but difficult to ignite and is not
so commonly used for ignition
45 Early Use
Outcrop coal was used in Britain during the Bronze Age where it has
been detected as forming part of the composition of funeral pyres It was also
commonly used in the early period of the Roman occupation Evidence of
trade in coal has been found at the inland port of Heronbridge near Chester
and in the Fenlands of East Anglia where coal from the Midlands was
transported via the Car Dyke for use in drying grain Coal cinders have been
found in the hearths of villas and military forts particularly in
Northumberland dated around AD400 In the west of England contemporary
writers described the wonder of a permanent brazier of coal on the altar of
Minerva at Aquae Suits (modem day Bath) although in fact easily-accessible
surface coal from what is now the Somerset coalfield was in common use in Q
quite lowly dwelUngs locally
However there is no evidence that the product was of great importance
in Britain before the High Middle Ages after about AD 1000 Mineral coal
came to be referred to as sea-coal probably because it came to many places
in eastern England including London by sea This is accepted as the more
3000 years BC Britannica 2004 Coal mining ancient use of outcropping coal ^ Dated to about AD200 Salway Peter A History of Roman Britain (2001) Oxford University Press p 314 ^ Forbes RJ Studies in Ancient Technology 1966 Brill Academic Publishers Boston p 128
129
likely explanation for the name than that it was found on beaches having
fallen from the exposed coal seams above or washed out of underwater coal
seam outcrops These easily accessible sources had largely become exhausted
(or could not meet the growing demand) by the 13th century when
underground mining from shafts or adits was developed^ In London there is
still a Sea-coal Lane (off the north side of Ludgate Hill) where the coal
merchants used to conduct their business An alternative name was pit-coal
because it came from mines It was however the development of the
Industrial Revolution that led to the large-scale use of coal as the steam
engine took over from the water wheeldeg
46 Present Usage
Coal is used in different forms and in different purposes
461 Coal as Fuel
Coal is primarily used as a solid fuel to produce electricity and heat
through combustion World coal consumption is about 53 billion tons
annually of which about 75 is used for the production of electricity The
region including the Peoples Republic of China and India uses about 17
billion tonnes annually forecast to exceed 27 billion tonnes in 2025 The
USA consumes about 10 billion tons of coal each year using 90 of it for
generation of electricity Coal is the fastest growing energy source in the
See Supra note 3 Phillip A Lowe Wilburn C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi (1976) Technical Economies Synfuels and
Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process The American Society of Mechanical Engineers Publications USA p 110
Data published by International Energy Outlook September 9 2005 which made an exhaustive survey on energy consumption and the probable future demand
130
world accounting for 42 of the increase in energy used for the three years 1 9
ending December 2004
When coal is used for electricity generation it is usually pulverized and
then burned in a furnace with a boiler The furnace heat converts boiler water
to steam which is then used to spin turbines which turn generators and create
electricity The thermodynamic efficiency of this process has been improved
over time Standard steam turbines have topped out with some of the most
advanced reaching about 35 thermodynamic efficiency for the entire
process which means 65 of the coal energy is rejected as waste heat into
the surrounding environment Old coal power plants especially
grandfathered plants are significantly less efficient and reject higher levels
of waste heat The emergence of the supercritical turbine concept envisions
running a boiler at extremely high temperatures and pressures with projected
efficiencies of 46 with further theorized increases in temperature and
pressure perhaps resulting in even higher efficiencies^ Approximately 40
of the world electricity production uses coal The total known deposits
recoverable by current technologies including highly polluting low energy
content types of coal might be sufficient for 300 years use at current
consumption levels although maximal production could be reached within
decades A more energy-efficient way of using coal for electricity production
would be via solid-oxide fuel cells or molten-carbonate fuel cells (or any
oxygen ion transport based fuel cells that do not discriminate between fiiels
as long as they consume oxygen) which would be able to get 60-85
~ Ibid World Primary Energy Production by Source 1970-2004 lthttpwwwpowergenerationsiemenscomdownloadpoolPGE2005_BalancingEconomicspdfgt Article Balancing economics and environmental friendliness ~ the challenge for supercritical coal-fired power plants with highest steam parameters in the future Retrieved on 2006-10-23 ie lignite bituminous
131
combined efficiency (direct electricity + waste heat steam turbine) Currently
these fuel cell technologies can only process gaseous fuels and they are also
sensitive to sulfur poisoning issues which would first have to be worked out
before large scale commercial success is possible with coal As far as gaseous
fuels go one idea is pulverized coal in a gas carrier such as nitrogen Another
option is coal gasification with water which may lower fuel cell voltage by
introducing oxygen to the fuel side of the electrolyte but may also greatly
simplify carbon sequestration
462 Coking and Use of Coke
Coke is a solid carbonaceous residue derived from low-ash low-sulfur
bituminous coal from which the volatile constituents are driven off by baking
in an oven without oxygen at temperatures as high as 1000 degC so that the
fixed carbon and residual ash are fused together Metallurgic coke is used as a
fuel and as a reducing agent in smelting iron ore in a blast furnace Coke from
coal is grey hard and porous and has a heating value of 248million
Btuton Byproducts of this conversion of coal to coke include coal tar
ammonia light oils and coal gas Petroleum coke is the solid residue
obtained in oil refining which resembles coke but contains too many
impurities to be useful in metallurgical applications
463 Gasification
High prices of oil and natural gas are leading to increased interest in
BTU Conversion technologies such as gasification methanation and
liquefaction Coal gasification breaks down the coal into its components
Data based on Robert H Williams and Eric D Larson A Comparison of Direct and Indirect Liquefaction Technologies for Making Fluid Fuels from Coal Article appeared in Energy for Sustainable Development Vol-VII London
16 J g32 op
296 MJkg 132
usually by subjecting it to high temperature and pressure using steam and
measured amounts of oxygen This leads to the production of syngas a 1 0
mixture mainly consisting of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2)
In the past coal was converted to make coal gas which was piped to
customers to bum for illumination heating and cooking At present the safer
natural gas is used instead South Africa still uses gasification of coal for
much of its petrochemical needs
The Synthetic Fuels Corporation was a US government-funded
corporation established in 1980 to create a market for alternatives to imported
fossil fuels (such as coal gasification) The corporation was discontinued in
1985^
Gasification is also a possibility for future energy use as the produced
syngas can be cleaned-up relatively easily leading to cleaner burning than
burning coal directly (the conventional way) The cleanliness of the cleaned-
up syngas is comparable to natural gas enabling to bum it in a more efficient
gas turbine rather than in a boiler used to drive a steam turbine Syngas
produced by gasification can be CO-shifled meaning that the combustible CO
in the Syngas is transferred into carbon dioxide (CO2) using water as a
reactant The CO-shift reaction also produces an amount of combustible
hydrogen (H2) equal to the amount of CO converted into CO2 The CO2
concentrations (or rather CO2 partial pressures) obtained by using coal
gasification followed by a CO-shift reaction are much higher than in case of
direct combustion of coal in air (which is mostly nitrogen) These higher
See supra note 15 Ibid
133
concentrations of carbon dioxide make carbon capture and storage much more
economical than it otherwise would be
464 Liquefaction
Coal can also be converted into liquid fuels like gasoline or diesel by
several different processes The Fischer-Tropsch process of indirect synthesis
of liquid hydrocarbons was used in Nazi Germany for many years and is
today used by Sasol in South Africa Coal would be gasified to make syngas
(a balanced purified mixture of CO and H2 gas) and the syngas condensed
using Fischer-Tropsch catalysts to make light hydrocarbons which are further
processed into gasoline and diesel Syngas can also be converted to methanol
which can be used as a fuel fuel additive or further processed into gasoline
via the Mobil M-gas process
A direct liquefaction process Bergius process (liquefaction by
hydrogenation) is also available but has not been used outside Germany
where such processes were operated both during World War I and World War
II SASOL in South Africa has experimented with direct hydrogenation
Several other direct liquefaction processes have been developed among these
being the SRC-I and SRC-II (Solvent Refined Coal) processes developed by
Gulf Oil and implemented as pilot plants in the United States in the 1960s and
1970s Another direct hydrogenation process was explored by the NUS
Corporation in 1976 and patented by Wilburn C Schroeder The process
involved dried pulverized coal mixed with roughly lwt molybdenum
catalysis Hydrogenation occurred by use of high temperature and pressure
synthesis gas produced in a separate gasifier The process ultimately yielded a
For detailed discussion see generally lthttpwwwpowergenerationorggt retrieved on 25-12-2(X)7 Data based on Cleaner Coal Technology Programme (October 1999) Technology Status Report 01 Oshy
Coal Liquefaction Department of Trade and Industry (UK) Published by UK Government Press London
134
synthetic crude product Naptha a limited amount of C3C4 gas light-medium
weight liquids (C5-C10) suitable for use as fuels small amounts of NH3 and
significant amounts of C02
Yet another process to manufacture liquid hydrocarbons from coal is
Low Temperature Carbonization (LTC) Coal is coked at temperatures
between 450 and 700degC compared to 800deg to 1000degC for metallurgical coke
These temperatures optimize the production of coal tars richer in lighter
hydrocarbons than normal coal tar The coal tar is then further processed into
fuels The Karrick process was developed by Lewis C Karrick an oil shale
technologist at the US Bureau of Mines in the 1920s^^
All of these liquid fiiel production methods release carbon dioxide
(CO2) in the conversion process far more than is released in the extraction
and refinement of liquid fuel production from petroleum If these methods
were adopted to replace declining petroleum supplies carbon dioxide
emissions would be greatly increased on a global scale For future
liquefaction projects Carbon dioxide sequestration is proposed to avoid
releasing it into the atmosphere though no pilot projects have confirmed the
feasibility of this approach on a wide scale As CO2 is one of the process
streams sequestration is easier than from fuel gases produced in combustion
of coal with air where CO2 is diluted by nitrogen and other gases
Sequestration will however add to the cost
Coal liquefaction is one of the backstop technologies that could
potentially limit escalation of oil prices and mitigate the effects of
^ Data based on the article by Phillip A Lowe Wilbum C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi Technical
Economies Synfuels and Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process
(1976) The American Society of Mechanical Engineers USA
Ibid
^ See Supra note 21
135
transportation energy shortage that some authors have suggested could occur
under peak oil This is contingent on liquefaction production capacity
becoming large enough to satiate the very large and growing demand for
petroleum Estimates of the cost of producing liquid fuels from coal suggest
that domestic US production of fuel from coal becomes cost-competitive
with oil priced at around 35 USD per barrel (break-even cost) This price
while above historical averages is well below current oil prices This makes
coal a viable financial alternative to oil for the time being although
production is not great enough to make synfuels viable on a large scale
Among commercially mature technologies advantage for indirect coal
liquefaction over direct coal liquefaction are reported by Williams and Larson
(2003) Estimates are reported for sites in China where break-even cost for
coal liquefaction may be in the range between 25 to 35 USDbarrel of oil
47 Harmful Effects
Apart from the useful effects there are harmful effects also
471 Coal Mining
Coal mining causes a number of harmful effects When coal surfaces
are exposed pyrite (iron sulfide) also known as fools gold comes in
contact with water and air and forms sulfuric acid As water drains from the
mine the acid moves into the waterways and as long as rain falls on the mine
tailings the sulfuric acid production continues whether the mine is still
operating or not If the coal is strip mined the entire exposed seam leaChes
sulfuric acid leaving the infertile subsoil on the surface and begins to pollute
- ltwwwfindarticlesa)mparticlesgt retrieved on September 9 2007 ^Based on an article Welcome to Coal People Magazine appeared in the site ltwwwcoalindiacomgt
Retrieved on September 92007 Ibid
136
streams by acidifying and killing fish plants and aquatic animals that are
sensitive to drastic pH shifts
By the late 1930s it was estimated that American coal mines produced
about 23 million tonnes of sulfuric acid annually In the Ohio River Basin
where twelve hundred operating coal mines drained an estimated annual 14
million tonnes of sulfuric acid into the waters in the 1960s and thousands of
abandoned coal mines leached acid as well In Pennsylvania alone mine
drainage had blighted 2000 stream miles by 1967^^
472 Coal Burning
Combustion of coal like any other fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide
(CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) along with varying amounts of sulfur
dioxide (SO2) depending on where it was mined Sulfur dioxide reacts with
oxygen to form sulfur trioxide (SO3) which then reacts with water to form
sulfuric acid The sulfuric acid is returned to the Earth as acid rain Scrubbing
systems which use lime to remove the sulfur dioxide can reduce or eliminate
the likelihood of acid rain
Emissions from coal-fired power plants represent one of the two largest
sources of carbon dioxide emissions which have been implicated as the
primary cause of global warming Coal mining and abandoned mines also
emit methane another cause of global warming Since the carbon content of
coal is higher than oil burning coal is a more serious threat to the stability of
the global climate as this carbon forms CO2 when burned Many other
pollutants are present in coal power station emissions as solid coal is more
^ ltvwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 28-7-2007 ^ Ibid 30 Based on article by John Dyson Fire Down Below published in Readers Digest July 2004 For a
detailed discussion on the blunders of scientific assessments of ecological hazards see generally Michel Crichton State ofFear Harper Collins publishers 2007 Hammersmith London
137
difficult to clean than oil which is refined before use A study commissioned
by environmental groups claims that coal power plant emissions are
responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths annually in the United
States alone Modem power plants utilize a variety of techniques to limit the
harmfiikiess of their waste products and improve the efficiency of burning
though these techniques are not subject to standard testing or regulation in the
US and are not widely implemented in some countries as they add to the
capital cost of the power plant To eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants
carbon capture and storage has been proposed but has yet to be commercially
used
Coal and coal waste products including fly ash bottom ash boiler slag
and flue gas desulfurization contain many heavy metals including arsenic
lead mercury nickel vanadium beryllium cadmium barium chromium
copper molybdenum zinc selenium and radium which are dangerous if
released into the environment Coal also contains low levels of uranium
thorium and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into
the environment may lead to radioactive contamination While these
substances are trace impurities enough coal is burned that significant
amounts of these substances are released resulting in more radioactive waste
than nuclear power plants Mercury emissions fi-om coal burning are
concentrated as they work their way up the food chain and converted into
dangerous biological compounds that have made it dangerous to eat fish from
many waterways of the world Due to its scientifically accepted connection
Based on an Article Deadly power plants Study fuels debate appeared in site lthttpwwwnativevillageorgInspiration-Albuquerque20Conventionhtmgt Retrieved on September 4 2006
- Ibid Ibid
138
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
Chapter IV
An Analysis of Subterranean Coal Fire and its Effects 41 Coal
Solid usually black but sometimes brown carbon rich material that
occurs in stratified solid material deposits One of the most important
Fossil Fuels it is found in many parts of the world Coal is formed
by heat and pressure over millions of years on vegetation deposited in ancient
shallow swamps or peat organic fuel consisting of a light spongy material
formed in temperate humid environments by the accumulation and partial
decomposition of vegetable remains under conditions of poor drainage Peat
deposit is the first step in the formation of coal Dried peat bums readily with
a smoky flame and a characteristic odor It is used for domestic heating and
can be used to fire boilers It is only a major contributor to the world energy
supply but large deposits occur in Canada China Indonesia Russia
Scandinavia and the US Major users include Finland Ireland Russia and
Sweden It varies in density porosity hardness and reflectivity The major
types are Lignite Sub-bituminous Bituminous and Anthracite Coal has long
been used in synthesizing dyes solvents and drugs The search for alternative
energy source has periodically revived interests in the conversion of coal into
liquid fuels Technology for coal liquification has been known early in the
20 century
42 Coal Mining
Extraction of coal deposits from the Earths surface and from
underground Because coal was the basic energy source that fueled the
Industrial Revolution the resulting industrial growth supported the large-scale
1 Encyclopedia Britannica (Ready reference) Vol-1 EB (India) PLtd New Delhi p 273
127
underground mines as the principal source of coal was in the Industrial
nations The mining of coal from surface and underground deposits today is
highly productive mechanical operation
43 Etymology
The word coal is of Aryan origin and appears in many Germanic
languages (German language Kohle Swedish language kol Hindi Language
Koyla)^ also giving the name for element carbon in those languagesmdash
charcoal is wood rendered to carbon and carbonic compounds by pyrolysis
charring)
44 Types of coal
As geological processes apply pressure to peat over time it is transformed
successively into
bull Lignite - also referred to as brown coal is the lowest rank of coal and
used almost exclusively as fuel for steam-electric power generation Jet
is a compact form of lignite that is sometimes polished and has been
used as an ornamental stone since the Iron Age
bull Sub-bituminous coal - whose properties range from those of lignite to
those of bituminous coal and are used primarily as fuel for steam-
electric power generation
bull Bituminous coal - a dense coal usually black sometimes dark brown
often with well-defined bands of bright and dull material used
primarily as fuel in steam-electric power generation with substantial
2 Ibid Vol-2 p 223 3 Oxford English Dictionary 1989 edition
128
quantities also used for heat and power applications in manufacturing
and to make coke
bull Anthracite - the highest rank a harder glossy black coal used
primarily for residential and commercial space heating
bull Graphite - technically the highest rank but difficult to ignite and is not
so commonly used for ignition
45 Early Use
Outcrop coal was used in Britain during the Bronze Age where it has
been detected as forming part of the composition of funeral pyres It was also
commonly used in the early period of the Roman occupation Evidence of
trade in coal has been found at the inland port of Heronbridge near Chester
and in the Fenlands of East Anglia where coal from the Midlands was
transported via the Car Dyke for use in drying grain Coal cinders have been
found in the hearths of villas and military forts particularly in
Northumberland dated around AD400 In the west of England contemporary
writers described the wonder of a permanent brazier of coal on the altar of
Minerva at Aquae Suits (modem day Bath) although in fact easily-accessible
surface coal from what is now the Somerset coalfield was in common use in Q
quite lowly dwelUngs locally
However there is no evidence that the product was of great importance
in Britain before the High Middle Ages after about AD 1000 Mineral coal
came to be referred to as sea-coal probably because it came to many places
in eastern England including London by sea This is accepted as the more
3000 years BC Britannica 2004 Coal mining ancient use of outcropping coal ^ Dated to about AD200 Salway Peter A History of Roman Britain (2001) Oxford University Press p 314 ^ Forbes RJ Studies in Ancient Technology 1966 Brill Academic Publishers Boston p 128
129
likely explanation for the name than that it was found on beaches having
fallen from the exposed coal seams above or washed out of underwater coal
seam outcrops These easily accessible sources had largely become exhausted
(or could not meet the growing demand) by the 13th century when
underground mining from shafts or adits was developed^ In London there is
still a Sea-coal Lane (off the north side of Ludgate Hill) where the coal
merchants used to conduct their business An alternative name was pit-coal
because it came from mines It was however the development of the
Industrial Revolution that led to the large-scale use of coal as the steam
engine took over from the water wheeldeg
46 Present Usage
Coal is used in different forms and in different purposes
461 Coal as Fuel
Coal is primarily used as a solid fuel to produce electricity and heat
through combustion World coal consumption is about 53 billion tons
annually of which about 75 is used for the production of electricity The
region including the Peoples Republic of China and India uses about 17
billion tonnes annually forecast to exceed 27 billion tonnes in 2025 The
USA consumes about 10 billion tons of coal each year using 90 of it for
generation of electricity Coal is the fastest growing energy source in the
See Supra note 3 Phillip A Lowe Wilburn C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi (1976) Technical Economies Synfuels and
Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process The American Society of Mechanical Engineers Publications USA p 110
Data published by International Energy Outlook September 9 2005 which made an exhaustive survey on energy consumption and the probable future demand
130
world accounting for 42 of the increase in energy used for the three years 1 9
ending December 2004
When coal is used for electricity generation it is usually pulverized and
then burned in a furnace with a boiler The furnace heat converts boiler water
to steam which is then used to spin turbines which turn generators and create
electricity The thermodynamic efficiency of this process has been improved
over time Standard steam turbines have topped out with some of the most
advanced reaching about 35 thermodynamic efficiency for the entire
process which means 65 of the coal energy is rejected as waste heat into
the surrounding environment Old coal power plants especially
grandfathered plants are significantly less efficient and reject higher levels
of waste heat The emergence of the supercritical turbine concept envisions
running a boiler at extremely high temperatures and pressures with projected
efficiencies of 46 with further theorized increases in temperature and
pressure perhaps resulting in even higher efficiencies^ Approximately 40
of the world electricity production uses coal The total known deposits
recoverable by current technologies including highly polluting low energy
content types of coal might be sufficient for 300 years use at current
consumption levels although maximal production could be reached within
decades A more energy-efficient way of using coal for electricity production
would be via solid-oxide fuel cells or molten-carbonate fuel cells (or any
oxygen ion transport based fuel cells that do not discriminate between fiiels
as long as they consume oxygen) which would be able to get 60-85
~ Ibid World Primary Energy Production by Source 1970-2004 lthttpwwwpowergenerationsiemenscomdownloadpoolPGE2005_BalancingEconomicspdfgt Article Balancing economics and environmental friendliness ~ the challenge for supercritical coal-fired power plants with highest steam parameters in the future Retrieved on 2006-10-23 ie lignite bituminous
131
combined efficiency (direct electricity + waste heat steam turbine) Currently
these fuel cell technologies can only process gaseous fuels and they are also
sensitive to sulfur poisoning issues which would first have to be worked out
before large scale commercial success is possible with coal As far as gaseous
fuels go one idea is pulverized coal in a gas carrier such as nitrogen Another
option is coal gasification with water which may lower fuel cell voltage by
introducing oxygen to the fuel side of the electrolyte but may also greatly
simplify carbon sequestration
462 Coking and Use of Coke
Coke is a solid carbonaceous residue derived from low-ash low-sulfur
bituminous coal from which the volatile constituents are driven off by baking
in an oven without oxygen at temperatures as high as 1000 degC so that the
fixed carbon and residual ash are fused together Metallurgic coke is used as a
fuel and as a reducing agent in smelting iron ore in a blast furnace Coke from
coal is grey hard and porous and has a heating value of 248million
Btuton Byproducts of this conversion of coal to coke include coal tar
ammonia light oils and coal gas Petroleum coke is the solid residue
obtained in oil refining which resembles coke but contains too many
impurities to be useful in metallurgical applications
463 Gasification
High prices of oil and natural gas are leading to increased interest in
BTU Conversion technologies such as gasification methanation and
liquefaction Coal gasification breaks down the coal into its components
Data based on Robert H Williams and Eric D Larson A Comparison of Direct and Indirect Liquefaction Technologies for Making Fluid Fuels from Coal Article appeared in Energy for Sustainable Development Vol-VII London
16 J g32 op
296 MJkg 132
usually by subjecting it to high temperature and pressure using steam and
measured amounts of oxygen This leads to the production of syngas a 1 0
mixture mainly consisting of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2)
In the past coal was converted to make coal gas which was piped to
customers to bum for illumination heating and cooking At present the safer
natural gas is used instead South Africa still uses gasification of coal for
much of its petrochemical needs
The Synthetic Fuels Corporation was a US government-funded
corporation established in 1980 to create a market for alternatives to imported
fossil fuels (such as coal gasification) The corporation was discontinued in
1985^
Gasification is also a possibility for future energy use as the produced
syngas can be cleaned-up relatively easily leading to cleaner burning than
burning coal directly (the conventional way) The cleanliness of the cleaned-
up syngas is comparable to natural gas enabling to bum it in a more efficient
gas turbine rather than in a boiler used to drive a steam turbine Syngas
produced by gasification can be CO-shifled meaning that the combustible CO
in the Syngas is transferred into carbon dioxide (CO2) using water as a
reactant The CO-shift reaction also produces an amount of combustible
hydrogen (H2) equal to the amount of CO converted into CO2 The CO2
concentrations (or rather CO2 partial pressures) obtained by using coal
gasification followed by a CO-shift reaction are much higher than in case of
direct combustion of coal in air (which is mostly nitrogen) These higher
See supra note 15 Ibid
133
concentrations of carbon dioxide make carbon capture and storage much more
economical than it otherwise would be
464 Liquefaction
Coal can also be converted into liquid fuels like gasoline or diesel by
several different processes The Fischer-Tropsch process of indirect synthesis
of liquid hydrocarbons was used in Nazi Germany for many years and is
today used by Sasol in South Africa Coal would be gasified to make syngas
(a balanced purified mixture of CO and H2 gas) and the syngas condensed
using Fischer-Tropsch catalysts to make light hydrocarbons which are further
processed into gasoline and diesel Syngas can also be converted to methanol
which can be used as a fuel fuel additive or further processed into gasoline
via the Mobil M-gas process
A direct liquefaction process Bergius process (liquefaction by
hydrogenation) is also available but has not been used outside Germany
where such processes were operated both during World War I and World War
II SASOL in South Africa has experimented with direct hydrogenation
Several other direct liquefaction processes have been developed among these
being the SRC-I and SRC-II (Solvent Refined Coal) processes developed by
Gulf Oil and implemented as pilot plants in the United States in the 1960s and
1970s Another direct hydrogenation process was explored by the NUS
Corporation in 1976 and patented by Wilburn C Schroeder The process
involved dried pulverized coal mixed with roughly lwt molybdenum
catalysis Hydrogenation occurred by use of high temperature and pressure
synthesis gas produced in a separate gasifier The process ultimately yielded a
For detailed discussion see generally lthttpwwwpowergenerationorggt retrieved on 25-12-2(X)7 Data based on Cleaner Coal Technology Programme (October 1999) Technology Status Report 01 Oshy
Coal Liquefaction Department of Trade and Industry (UK) Published by UK Government Press London
134
synthetic crude product Naptha a limited amount of C3C4 gas light-medium
weight liquids (C5-C10) suitable for use as fuels small amounts of NH3 and
significant amounts of C02
Yet another process to manufacture liquid hydrocarbons from coal is
Low Temperature Carbonization (LTC) Coal is coked at temperatures
between 450 and 700degC compared to 800deg to 1000degC for metallurgical coke
These temperatures optimize the production of coal tars richer in lighter
hydrocarbons than normal coal tar The coal tar is then further processed into
fuels The Karrick process was developed by Lewis C Karrick an oil shale
technologist at the US Bureau of Mines in the 1920s^^
All of these liquid fiiel production methods release carbon dioxide
(CO2) in the conversion process far more than is released in the extraction
and refinement of liquid fuel production from petroleum If these methods
were adopted to replace declining petroleum supplies carbon dioxide
emissions would be greatly increased on a global scale For future
liquefaction projects Carbon dioxide sequestration is proposed to avoid
releasing it into the atmosphere though no pilot projects have confirmed the
feasibility of this approach on a wide scale As CO2 is one of the process
streams sequestration is easier than from fuel gases produced in combustion
of coal with air where CO2 is diluted by nitrogen and other gases
Sequestration will however add to the cost
Coal liquefaction is one of the backstop technologies that could
potentially limit escalation of oil prices and mitigate the effects of
^ Data based on the article by Phillip A Lowe Wilbum C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi Technical
Economies Synfuels and Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process
(1976) The American Society of Mechanical Engineers USA
Ibid
^ See Supra note 21
135
transportation energy shortage that some authors have suggested could occur
under peak oil This is contingent on liquefaction production capacity
becoming large enough to satiate the very large and growing demand for
petroleum Estimates of the cost of producing liquid fuels from coal suggest
that domestic US production of fuel from coal becomes cost-competitive
with oil priced at around 35 USD per barrel (break-even cost) This price
while above historical averages is well below current oil prices This makes
coal a viable financial alternative to oil for the time being although
production is not great enough to make synfuels viable on a large scale
Among commercially mature technologies advantage for indirect coal
liquefaction over direct coal liquefaction are reported by Williams and Larson
(2003) Estimates are reported for sites in China where break-even cost for
coal liquefaction may be in the range between 25 to 35 USDbarrel of oil
47 Harmful Effects
Apart from the useful effects there are harmful effects also
471 Coal Mining
Coal mining causes a number of harmful effects When coal surfaces
are exposed pyrite (iron sulfide) also known as fools gold comes in
contact with water and air and forms sulfuric acid As water drains from the
mine the acid moves into the waterways and as long as rain falls on the mine
tailings the sulfuric acid production continues whether the mine is still
operating or not If the coal is strip mined the entire exposed seam leaChes
sulfuric acid leaving the infertile subsoil on the surface and begins to pollute
- ltwwwfindarticlesa)mparticlesgt retrieved on September 9 2007 ^Based on an article Welcome to Coal People Magazine appeared in the site ltwwwcoalindiacomgt
Retrieved on September 92007 Ibid
136
streams by acidifying and killing fish plants and aquatic animals that are
sensitive to drastic pH shifts
By the late 1930s it was estimated that American coal mines produced
about 23 million tonnes of sulfuric acid annually In the Ohio River Basin
where twelve hundred operating coal mines drained an estimated annual 14
million tonnes of sulfuric acid into the waters in the 1960s and thousands of
abandoned coal mines leached acid as well In Pennsylvania alone mine
drainage had blighted 2000 stream miles by 1967^^
472 Coal Burning
Combustion of coal like any other fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide
(CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) along with varying amounts of sulfur
dioxide (SO2) depending on where it was mined Sulfur dioxide reacts with
oxygen to form sulfur trioxide (SO3) which then reacts with water to form
sulfuric acid The sulfuric acid is returned to the Earth as acid rain Scrubbing
systems which use lime to remove the sulfur dioxide can reduce or eliminate
the likelihood of acid rain
Emissions from coal-fired power plants represent one of the two largest
sources of carbon dioxide emissions which have been implicated as the
primary cause of global warming Coal mining and abandoned mines also
emit methane another cause of global warming Since the carbon content of
coal is higher than oil burning coal is a more serious threat to the stability of
the global climate as this carbon forms CO2 when burned Many other
pollutants are present in coal power station emissions as solid coal is more
^ ltvwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 28-7-2007 ^ Ibid 30 Based on article by John Dyson Fire Down Below published in Readers Digest July 2004 For a
detailed discussion on the blunders of scientific assessments of ecological hazards see generally Michel Crichton State ofFear Harper Collins publishers 2007 Hammersmith London
137
difficult to clean than oil which is refined before use A study commissioned
by environmental groups claims that coal power plant emissions are
responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths annually in the United
States alone Modem power plants utilize a variety of techniques to limit the
harmfiikiess of their waste products and improve the efficiency of burning
though these techniques are not subject to standard testing or regulation in the
US and are not widely implemented in some countries as they add to the
capital cost of the power plant To eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants
carbon capture and storage has been proposed but has yet to be commercially
used
Coal and coal waste products including fly ash bottom ash boiler slag
and flue gas desulfurization contain many heavy metals including arsenic
lead mercury nickel vanadium beryllium cadmium barium chromium
copper molybdenum zinc selenium and radium which are dangerous if
released into the environment Coal also contains low levels of uranium
thorium and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into
the environment may lead to radioactive contamination While these
substances are trace impurities enough coal is burned that significant
amounts of these substances are released resulting in more radioactive waste
than nuclear power plants Mercury emissions fi-om coal burning are
concentrated as they work their way up the food chain and converted into
dangerous biological compounds that have made it dangerous to eat fish from
many waterways of the world Due to its scientifically accepted connection
Based on an Article Deadly power plants Study fuels debate appeared in site lthttpwwwnativevillageorgInspiration-Albuquerque20Conventionhtmgt Retrieved on September 4 2006
- Ibid Ibid
138
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
underground mines as the principal source of coal was in the Industrial
nations The mining of coal from surface and underground deposits today is
highly productive mechanical operation
43 Etymology
The word coal is of Aryan origin and appears in many Germanic
languages (German language Kohle Swedish language kol Hindi Language
Koyla)^ also giving the name for element carbon in those languagesmdash
charcoal is wood rendered to carbon and carbonic compounds by pyrolysis
charring)
44 Types of coal
As geological processes apply pressure to peat over time it is transformed
successively into
bull Lignite - also referred to as brown coal is the lowest rank of coal and
used almost exclusively as fuel for steam-electric power generation Jet
is a compact form of lignite that is sometimes polished and has been
used as an ornamental stone since the Iron Age
bull Sub-bituminous coal - whose properties range from those of lignite to
those of bituminous coal and are used primarily as fuel for steam-
electric power generation
bull Bituminous coal - a dense coal usually black sometimes dark brown
often with well-defined bands of bright and dull material used
primarily as fuel in steam-electric power generation with substantial
2 Ibid Vol-2 p 223 3 Oxford English Dictionary 1989 edition
128
quantities also used for heat and power applications in manufacturing
and to make coke
bull Anthracite - the highest rank a harder glossy black coal used
primarily for residential and commercial space heating
bull Graphite - technically the highest rank but difficult to ignite and is not
so commonly used for ignition
45 Early Use
Outcrop coal was used in Britain during the Bronze Age where it has
been detected as forming part of the composition of funeral pyres It was also
commonly used in the early period of the Roman occupation Evidence of
trade in coal has been found at the inland port of Heronbridge near Chester
and in the Fenlands of East Anglia where coal from the Midlands was
transported via the Car Dyke for use in drying grain Coal cinders have been
found in the hearths of villas and military forts particularly in
Northumberland dated around AD400 In the west of England contemporary
writers described the wonder of a permanent brazier of coal on the altar of
Minerva at Aquae Suits (modem day Bath) although in fact easily-accessible
surface coal from what is now the Somerset coalfield was in common use in Q
quite lowly dwelUngs locally
However there is no evidence that the product was of great importance
in Britain before the High Middle Ages after about AD 1000 Mineral coal
came to be referred to as sea-coal probably because it came to many places
in eastern England including London by sea This is accepted as the more
3000 years BC Britannica 2004 Coal mining ancient use of outcropping coal ^ Dated to about AD200 Salway Peter A History of Roman Britain (2001) Oxford University Press p 314 ^ Forbes RJ Studies in Ancient Technology 1966 Brill Academic Publishers Boston p 128
129
likely explanation for the name than that it was found on beaches having
fallen from the exposed coal seams above or washed out of underwater coal
seam outcrops These easily accessible sources had largely become exhausted
(or could not meet the growing demand) by the 13th century when
underground mining from shafts or adits was developed^ In London there is
still a Sea-coal Lane (off the north side of Ludgate Hill) where the coal
merchants used to conduct their business An alternative name was pit-coal
because it came from mines It was however the development of the
Industrial Revolution that led to the large-scale use of coal as the steam
engine took over from the water wheeldeg
46 Present Usage
Coal is used in different forms and in different purposes
461 Coal as Fuel
Coal is primarily used as a solid fuel to produce electricity and heat
through combustion World coal consumption is about 53 billion tons
annually of which about 75 is used for the production of electricity The
region including the Peoples Republic of China and India uses about 17
billion tonnes annually forecast to exceed 27 billion tonnes in 2025 The
USA consumes about 10 billion tons of coal each year using 90 of it for
generation of electricity Coal is the fastest growing energy source in the
See Supra note 3 Phillip A Lowe Wilburn C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi (1976) Technical Economies Synfuels and
Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process The American Society of Mechanical Engineers Publications USA p 110
Data published by International Energy Outlook September 9 2005 which made an exhaustive survey on energy consumption and the probable future demand
130
world accounting for 42 of the increase in energy used for the three years 1 9
ending December 2004
When coal is used for electricity generation it is usually pulverized and
then burned in a furnace with a boiler The furnace heat converts boiler water
to steam which is then used to spin turbines which turn generators and create
electricity The thermodynamic efficiency of this process has been improved
over time Standard steam turbines have topped out with some of the most
advanced reaching about 35 thermodynamic efficiency for the entire
process which means 65 of the coal energy is rejected as waste heat into
the surrounding environment Old coal power plants especially
grandfathered plants are significantly less efficient and reject higher levels
of waste heat The emergence of the supercritical turbine concept envisions
running a boiler at extremely high temperatures and pressures with projected
efficiencies of 46 with further theorized increases in temperature and
pressure perhaps resulting in even higher efficiencies^ Approximately 40
of the world electricity production uses coal The total known deposits
recoverable by current technologies including highly polluting low energy
content types of coal might be sufficient for 300 years use at current
consumption levels although maximal production could be reached within
decades A more energy-efficient way of using coal for electricity production
would be via solid-oxide fuel cells or molten-carbonate fuel cells (or any
oxygen ion transport based fuel cells that do not discriminate between fiiels
as long as they consume oxygen) which would be able to get 60-85
~ Ibid World Primary Energy Production by Source 1970-2004 lthttpwwwpowergenerationsiemenscomdownloadpoolPGE2005_BalancingEconomicspdfgt Article Balancing economics and environmental friendliness ~ the challenge for supercritical coal-fired power plants with highest steam parameters in the future Retrieved on 2006-10-23 ie lignite bituminous
131
combined efficiency (direct electricity + waste heat steam turbine) Currently
these fuel cell technologies can only process gaseous fuels and they are also
sensitive to sulfur poisoning issues which would first have to be worked out
before large scale commercial success is possible with coal As far as gaseous
fuels go one idea is pulverized coal in a gas carrier such as nitrogen Another
option is coal gasification with water which may lower fuel cell voltage by
introducing oxygen to the fuel side of the electrolyte but may also greatly
simplify carbon sequestration
462 Coking and Use of Coke
Coke is a solid carbonaceous residue derived from low-ash low-sulfur
bituminous coal from which the volatile constituents are driven off by baking
in an oven without oxygen at temperatures as high as 1000 degC so that the
fixed carbon and residual ash are fused together Metallurgic coke is used as a
fuel and as a reducing agent in smelting iron ore in a blast furnace Coke from
coal is grey hard and porous and has a heating value of 248million
Btuton Byproducts of this conversion of coal to coke include coal tar
ammonia light oils and coal gas Petroleum coke is the solid residue
obtained in oil refining which resembles coke but contains too many
impurities to be useful in metallurgical applications
463 Gasification
High prices of oil and natural gas are leading to increased interest in
BTU Conversion technologies such as gasification methanation and
liquefaction Coal gasification breaks down the coal into its components
Data based on Robert H Williams and Eric D Larson A Comparison of Direct and Indirect Liquefaction Technologies for Making Fluid Fuels from Coal Article appeared in Energy for Sustainable Development Vol-VII London
16 J g32 op
296 MJkg 132
usually by subjecting it to high temperature and pressure using steam and
measured amounts of oxygen This leads to the production of syngas a 1 0
mixture mainly consisting of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2)
In the past coal was converted to make coal gas which was piped to
customers to bum for illumination heating and cooking At present the safer
natural gas is used instead South Africa still uses gasification of coal for
much of its petrochemical needs
The Synthetic Fuels Corporation was a US government-funded
corporation established in 1980 to create a market for alternatives to imported
fossil fuels (such as coal gasification) The corporation was discontinued in
1985^
Gasification is also a possibility for future energy use as the produced
syngas can be cleaned-up relatively easily leading to cleaner burning than
burning coal directly (the conventional way) The cleanliness of the cleaned-
up syngas is comparable to natural gas enabling to bum it in a more efficient
gas turbine rather than in a boiler used to drive a steam turbine Syngas
produced by gasification can be CO-shifled meaning that the combustible CO
in the Syngas is transferred into carbon dioxide (CO2) using water as a
reactant The CO-shift reaction also produces an amount of combustible
hydrogen (H2) equal to the amount of CO converted into CO2 The CO2
concentrations (or rather CO2 partial pressures) obtained by using coal
gasification followed by a CO-shift reaction are much higher than in case of
direct combustion of coal in air (which is mostly nitrogen) These higher
See supra note 15 Ibid
133
concentrations of carbon dioxide make carbon capture and storage much more
economical than it otherwise would be
464 Liquefaction
Coal can also be converted into liquid fuels like gasoline or diesel by
several different processes The Fischer-Tropsch process of indirect synthesis
of liquid hydrocarbons was used in Nazi Germany for many years and is
today used by Sasol in South Africa Coal would be gasified to make syngas
(a balanced purified mixture of CO and H2 gas) and the syngas condensed
using Fischer-Tropsch catalysts to make light hydrocarbons which are further
processed into gasoline and diesel Syngas can also be converted to methanol
which can be used as a fuel fuel additive or further processed into gasoline
via the Mobil M-gas process
A direct liquefaction process Bergius process (liquefaction by
hydrogenation) is also available but has not been used outside Germany
where such processes were operated both during World War I and World War
II SASOL in South Africa has experimented with direct hydrogenation
Several other direct liquefaction processes have been developed among these
being the SRC-I and SRC-II (Solvent Refined Coal) processes developed by
Gulf Oil and implemented as pilot plants in the United States in the 1960s and
1970s Another direct hydrogenation process was explored by the NUS
Corporation in 1976 and patented by Wilburn C Schroeder The process
involved dried pulverized coal mixed with roughly lwt molybdenum
catalysis Hydrogenation occurred by use of high temperature and pressure
synthesis gas produced in a separate gasifier The process ultimately yielded a
For detailed discussion see generally lthttpwwwpowergenerationorggt retrieved on 25-12-2(X)7 Data based on Cleaner Coal Technology Programme (October 1999) Technology Status Report 01 Oshy
Coal Liquefaction Department of Trade and Industry (UK) Published by UK Government Press London
134
synthetic crude product Naptha a limited amount of C3C4 gas light-medium
weight liquids (C5-C10) suitable for use as fuels small amounts of NH3 and
significant amounts of C02
Yet another process to manufacture liquid hydrocarbons from coal is
Low Temperature Carbonization (LTC) Coal is coked at temperatures
between 450 and 700degC compared to 800deg to 1000degC for metallurgical coke
These temperatures optimize the production of coal tars richer in lighter
hydrocarbons than normal coal tar The coal tar is then further processed into
fuels The Karrick process was developed by Lewis C Karrick an oil shale
technologist at the US Bureau of Mines in the 1920s^^
All of these liquid fiiel production methods release carbon dioxide
(CO2) in the conversion process far more than is released in the extraction
and refinement of liquid fuel production from petroleum If these methods
were adopted to replace declining petroleum supplies carbon dioxide
emissions would be greatly increased on a global scale For future
liquefaction projects Carbon dioxide sequestration is proposed to avoid
releasing it into the atmosphere though no pilot projects have confirmed the
feasibility of this approach on a wide scale As CO2 is one of the process
streams sequestration is easier than from fuel gases produced in combustion
of coal with air where CO2 is diluted by nitrogen and other gases
Sequestration will however add to the cost
Coal liquefaction is one of the backstop technologies that could
potentially limit escalation of oil prices and mitigate the effects of
^ Data based on the article by Phillip A Lowe Wilbum C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi Technical
Economies Synfuels and Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process
(1976) The American Society of Mechanical Engineers USA
Ibid
^ See Supra note 21
135
transportation energy shortage that some authors have suggested could occur
under peak oil This is contingent on liquefaction production capacity
becoming large enough to satiate the very large and growing demand for
petroleum Estimates of the cost of producing liquid fuels from coal suggest
that domestic US production of fuel from coal becomes cost-competitive
with oil priced at around 35 USD per barrel (break-even cost) This price
while above historical averages is well below current oil prices This makes
coal a viable financial alternative to oil for the time being although
production is not great enough to make synfuels viable on a large scale
Among commercially mature technologies advantage for indirect coal
liquefaction over direct coal liquefaction are reported by Williams and Larson
(2003) Estimates are reported for sites in China where break-even cost for
coal liquefaction may be in the range between 25 to 35 USDbarrel of oil
47 Harmful Effects
Apart from the useful effects there are harmful effects also
471 Coal Mining
Coal mining causes a number of harmful effects When coal surfaces
are exposed pyrite (iron sulfide) also known as fools gold comes in
contact with water and air and forms sulfuric acid As water drains from the
mine the acid moves into the waterways and as long as rain falls on the mine
tailings the sulfuric acid production continues whether the mine is still
operating or not If the coal is strip mined the entire exposed seam leaChes
sulfuric acid leaving the infertile subsoil on the surface and begins to pollute
- ltwwwfindarticlesa)mparticlesgt retrieved on September 9 2007 ^Based on an article Welcome to Coal People Magazine appeared in the site ltwwwcoalindiacomgt
Retrieved on September 92007 Ibid
136
streams by acidifying and killing fish plants and aquatic animals that are
sensitive to drastic pH shifts
By the late 1930s it was estimated that American coal mines produced
about 23 million tonnes of sulfuric acid annually In the Ohio River Basin
where twelve hundred operating coal mines drained an estimated annual 14
million tonnes of sulfuric acid into the waters in the 1960s and thousands of
abandoned coal mines leached acid as well In Pennsylvania alone mine
drainage had blighted 2000 stream miles by 1967^^
472 Coal Burning
Combustion of coal like any other fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide
(CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) along with varying amounts of sulfur
dioxide (SO2) depending on where it was mined Sulfur dioxide reacts with
oxygen to form sulfur trioxide (SO3) which then reacts with water to form
sulfuric acid The sulfuric acid is returned to the Earth as acid rain Scrubbing
systems which use lime to remove the sulfur dioxide can reduce or eliminate
the likelihood of acid rain
Emissions from coal-fired power plants represent one of the two largest
sources of carbon dioxide emissions which have been implicated as the
primary cause of global warming Coal mining and abandoned mines also
emit methane another cause of global warming Since the carbon content of
coal is higher than oil burning coal is a more serious threat to the stability of
the global climate as this carbon forms CO2 when burned Many other
pollutants are present in coal power station emissions as solid coal is more
^ ltvwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 28-7-2007 ^ Ibid 30 Based on article by John Dyson Fire Down Below published in Readers Digest July 2004 For a
detailed discussion on the blunders of scientific assessments of ecological hazards see generally Michel Crichton State ofFear Harper Collins publishers 2007 Hammersmith London
137
difficult to clean than oil which is refined before use A study commissioned
by environmental groups claims that coal power plant emissions are
responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths annually in the United
States alone Modem power plants utilize a variety of techniques to limit the
harmfiikiess of their waste products and improve the efficiency of burning
though these techniques are not subject to standard testing or regulation in the
US and are not widely implemented in some countries as they add to the
capital cost of the power plant To eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants
carbon capture and storage has been proposed but has yet to be commercially
used
Coal and coal waste products including fly ash bottom ash boiler slag
and flue gas desulfurization contain many heavy metals including arsenic
lead mercury nickel vanadium beryllium cadmium barium chromium
copper molybdenum zinc selenium and radium which are dangerous if
released into the environment Coal also contains low levels of uranium
thorium and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into
the environment may lead to radioactive contamination While these
substances are trace impurities enough coal is burned that significant
amounts of these substances are released resulting in more radioactive waste
than nuclear power plants Mercury emissions fi-om coal burning are
concentrated as they work their way up the food chain and converted into
dangerous biological compounds that have made it dangerous to eat fish from
many waterways of the world Due to its scientifically accepted connection
Based on an Article Deadly power plants Study fuels debate appeared in site lthttpwwwnativevillageorgInspiration-Albuquerque20Conventionhtmgt Retrieved on September 4 2006
- Ibid Ibid
138
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
quantities also used for heat and power applications in manufacturing
and to make coke
bull Anthracite - the highest rank a harder glossy black coal used
primarily for residential and commercial space heating
bull Graphite - technically the highest rank but difficult to ignite and is not
so commonly used for ignition
45 Early Use
Outcrop coal was used in Britain during the Bronze Age where it has
been detected as forming part of the composition of funeral pyres It was also
commonly used in the early period of the Roman occupation Evidence of
trade in coal has been found at the inland port of Heronbridge near Chester
and in the Fenlands of East Anglia where coal from the Midlands was
transported via the Car Dyke for use in drying grain Coal cinders have been
found in the hearths of villas and military forts particularly in
Northumberland dated around AD400 In the west of England contemporary
writers described the wonder of a permanent brazier of coal on the altar of
Minerva at Aquae Suits (modem day Bath) although in fact easily-accessible
surface coal from what is now the Somerset coalfield was in common use in Q
quite lowly dwelUngs locally
However there is no evidence that the product was of great importance
in Britain before the High Middle Ages after about AD 1000 Mineral coal
came to be referred to as sea-coal probably because it came to many places
in eastern England including London by sea This is accepted as the more
3000 years BC Britannica 2004 Coal mining ancient use of outcropping coal ^ Dated to about AD200 Salway Peter A History of Roman Britain (2001) Oxford University Press p 314 ^ Forbes RJ Studies in Ancient Technology 1966 Brill Academic Publishers Boston p 128
129
likely explanation for the name than that it was found on beaches having
fallen from the exposed coal seams above or washed out of underwater coal
seam outcrops These easily accessible sources had largely become exhausted
(or could not meet the growing demand) by the 13th century when
underground mining from shafts or adits was developed^ In London there is
still a Sea-coal Lane (off the north side of Ludgate Hill) where the coal
merchants used to conduct their business An alternative name was pit-coal
because it came from mines It was however the development of the
Industrial Revolution that led to the large-scale use of coal as the steam
engine took over from the water wheeldeg
46 Present Usage
Coal is used in different forms and in different purposes
461 Coal as Fuel
Coal is primarily used as a solid fuel to produce electricity and heat
through combustion World coal consumption is about 53 billion tons
annually of which about 75 is used for the production of electricity The
region including the Peoples Republic of China and India uses about 17
billion tonnes annually forecast to exceed 27 billion tonnes in 2025 The
USA consumes about 10 billion tons of coal each year using 90 of it for
generation of electricity Coal is the fastest growing energy source in the
See Supra note 3 Phillip A Lowe Wilburn C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi (1976) Technical Economies Synfuels and
Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process The American Society of Mechanical Engineers Publications USA p 110
Data published by International Energy Outlook September 9 2005 which made an exhaustive survey on energy consumption and the probable future demand
130
world accounting for 42 of the increase in energy used for the three years 1 9
ending December 2004
When coal is used for electricity generation it is usually pulverized and
then burned in a furnace with a boiler The furnace heat converts boiler water
to steam which is then used to spin turbines which turn generators and create
electricity The thermodynamic efficiency of this process has been improved
over time Standard steam turbines have topped out with some of the most
advanced reaching about 35 thermodynamic efficiency for the entire
process which means 65 of the coal energy is rejected as waste heat into
the surrounding environment Old coal power plants especially
grandfathered plants are significantly less efficient and reject higher levels
of waste heat The emergence of the supercritical turbine concept envisions
running a boiler at extremely high temperatures and pressures with projected
efficiencies of 46 with further theorized increases in temperature and
pressure perhaps resulting in even higher efficiencies^ Approximately 40
of the world electricity production uses coal The total known deposits
recoverable by current technologies including highly polluting low energy
content types of coal might be sufficient for 300 years use at current
consumption levels although maximal production could be reached within
decades A more energy-efficient way of using coal for electricity production
would be via solid-oxide fuel cells or molten-carbonate fuel cells (or any
oxygen ion transport based fuel cells that do not discriminate between fiiels
as long as they consume oxygen) which would be able to get 60-85
~ Ibid World Primary Energy Production by Source 1970-2004 lthttpwwwpowergenerationsiemenscomdownloadpoolPGE2005_BalancingEconomicspdfgt Article Balancing economics and environmental friendliness ~ the challenge for supercritical coal-fired power plants with highest steam parameters in the future Retrieved on 2006-10-23 ie lignite bituminous
131
combined efficiency (direct electricity + waste heat steam turbine) Currently
these fuel cell technologies can only process gaseous fuels and they are also
sensitive to sulfur poisoning issues which would first have to be worked out
before large scale commercial success is possible with coal As far as gaseous
fuels go one idea is pulverized coal in a gas carrier such as nitrogen Another
option is coal gasification with water which may lower fuel cell voltage by
introducing oxygen to the fuel side of the electrolyte but may also greatly
simplify carbon sequestration
462 Coking and Use of Coke
Coke is a solid carbonaceous residue derived from low-ash low-sulfur
bituminous coal from which the volatile constituents are driven off by baking
in an oven without oxygen at temperatures as high as 1000 degC so that the
fixed carbon and residual ash are fused together Metallurgic coke is used as a
fuel and as a reducing agent in smelting iron ore in a blast furnace Coke from
coal is grey hard and porous and has a heating value of 248million
Btuton Byproducts of this conversion of coal to coke include coal tar
ammonia light oils and coal gas Petroleum coke is the solid residue
obtained in oil refining which resembles coke but contains too many
impurities to be useful in metallurgical applications
463 Gasification
High prices of oil and natural gas are leading to increased interest in
BTU Conversion technologies such as gasification methanation and
liquefaction Coal gasification breaks down the coal into its components
Data based on Robert H Williams and Eric D Larson A Comparison of Direct and Indirect Liquefaction Technologies for Making Fluid Fuels from Coal Article appeared in Energy for Sustainable Development Vol-VII London
16 J g32 op
296 MJkg 132
usually by subjecting it to high temperature and pressure using steam and
measured amounts of oxygen This leads to the production of syngas a 1 0
mixture mainly consisting of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2)
In the past coal was converted to make coal gas which was piped to
customers to bum for illumination heating and cooking At present the safer
natural gas is used instead South Africa still uses gasification of coal for
much of its petrochemical needs
The Synthetic Fuels Corporation was a US government-funded
corporation established in 1980 to create a market for alternatives to imported
fossil fuels (such as coal gasification) The corporation was discontinued in
1985^
Gasification is also a possibility for future energy use as the produced
syngas can be cleaned-up relatively easily leading to cleaner burning than
burning coal directly (the conventional way) The cleanliness of the cleaned-
up syngas is comparable to natural gas enabling to bum it in a more efficient
gas turbine rather than in a boiler used to drive a steam turbine Syngas
produced by gasification can be CO-shifled meaning that the combustible CO
in the Syngas is transferred into carbon dioxide (CO2) using water as a
reactant The CO-shift reaction also produces an amount of combustible
hydrogen (H2) equal to the amount of CO converted into CO2 The CO2
concentrations (or rather CO2 partial pressures) obtained by using coal
gasification followed by a CO-shift reaction are much higher than in case of
direct combustion of coal in air (which is mostly nitrogen) These higher
See supra note 15 Ibid
133
concentrations of carbon dioxide make carbon capture and storage much more
economical than it otherwise would be
464 Liquefaction
Coal can also be converted into liquid fuels like gasoline or diesel by
several different processes The Fischer-Tropsch process of indirect synthesis
of liquid hydrocarbons was used in Nazi Germany for many years and is
today used by Sasol in South Africa Coal would be gasified to make syngas
(a balanced purified mixture of CO and H2 gas) and the syngas condensed
using Fischer-Tropsch catalysts to make light hydrocarbons which are further
processed into gasoline and diesel Syngas can also be converted to methanol
which can be used as a fuel fuel additive or further processed into gasoline
via the Mobil M-gas process
A direct liquefaction process Bergius process (liquefaction by
hydrogenation) is also available but has not been used outside Germany
where such processes were operated both during World War I and World War
II SASOL in South Africa has experimented with direct hydrogenation
Several other direct liquefaction processes have been developed among these
being the SRC-I and SRC-II (Solvent Refined Coal) processes developed by
Gulf Oil and implemented as pilot plants in the United States in the 1960s and
1970s Another direct hydrogenation process was explored by the NUS
Corporation in 1976 and patented by Wilburn C Schroeder The process
involved dried pulverized coal mixed with roughly lwt molybdenum
catalysis Hydrogenation occurred by use of high temperature and pressure
synthesis gas produced in a separate gasifier The process ultimately yielded a
For detailed discussion see generally lthttpwwwpowergenerationorggt retrieved on 25-12-2(X)7 Data based on Cleaner Coal Technology Programme (October 1999) Technology Status Report 01 Oshy
Coal Liquefaction Department of Trade and Industry (UK) Published by UK Government Press London
134
synthetic crude product Naptha a limited amount of C3C4 gas light-medium
weight liquids (C5-C10) suitable for use as fuels small amounts of NH3 and
significant amounts of C02
Yet another process to manufacture liquid hydrocarbons from coal is
Low Temperature Carbonization (LTC) Coal is coked at temperatures
between 450 and 700degC compared to 800deg to 1000degC for metallurgical coke
These temperatures optimize the production of coal tars richer in lighter
hydrocarbons than normal coal tar The coal tar is then further processed into
fuels The Karrick process was developed by Lewis C Karrick an oil shale
technologist at the US Bureau of Mines in the 1920s^^
All of these liquid fiiel production methods release carbon dioxide
(CO2) in the conversion process far more than is released in the extraction
and refinement of liquid fuel production from petroleum If these methods
were adopted to replace declining petroleum supplies carbon dioxide
emissions would be greatly increased on a global scale For future
liquefaction projects Carbon dioxide sequestration is proposed to avoid
releasing it into the atmosphere though no pilot projects have confirmed the
feasibility of this approach on a wide scale As CO2 is one of the process
streams sequestration is easier than from fuel gases produced in combustion
of coal with air where CO2 is diluted by nitrogen and other gases
Sequestration will however add to the cost
Coal liquefaction is one of the backstop technologies that could
potentially limit escalation of oil prices and mitigate the effects of
^ Data based on the article by Phillip A Lowe Wilbum C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi Technical
Economies Synfuels and Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process
(1976) The American Society of Mechanical Engineers USA
Ibid
^ See Supra note 21
135
transportation energy shortage that some authors have suggested could occur
under peak oil This is contingent on liquefaction production capacity
becoming large enough to satiate the very large and growing demand for
petroleum Estimates of the cost of producing liquid fuels from coal suggest
that domestic US production of fuel from coal becomes cost-competitive
with oil priced at around 35 USD per barrel (break-even cost) This price
while above historical averages is well below current oil prices This makes
coal a viable financial alternative to oil for the time being although
production is not great enough to make synfuels viable on a large scale
Among commercially mature technologies advantage for indirect coal
liquefaction over direct coal liquefaction are reported by Williams and Larson
(2003) Estimates are reported for sites in China where break-even cost for
coal liquefaction may be in the range between 25 to 35 USDbarrel of oil
47 Harmful Effects
Apart from the useful effects there are harmful effects also
471 Coal Mining
Coal mining causes a number of harmful effects When coal surfaces
are exposed pyrite (iron sulfide) also known as fools gold comes in
contact with water and air and forms sulfuric acid As water drains from the
mine the acid moves into the waterways and as long as rain falls on the mine
tailings the sulfuric acid production continues whether the mine is still
operating or not If the coal is strip mined the entire exposed seam leaChes
sulfuric acid leaving the infertile subsoil on the surface and begins to pollute
- ltwwwfindarticlesa)mparticlesgt retrieved on September 9 2007 ^Based on an article Welcome to Coal People Magazine appeared in the site ltwwwcoalindiacomgt
Retrieved on September 92007 Ibid
136
streams by acidifying and killing fish plants and aquatic animals that are
sensitive to drastic pH shifts
By the late 1930s it was estimated that American coal mines produced
about 23 million tonnes of sulfuric acid annually In the Ohio River Basin
where twelve hundred operating coal mines drained an estimated annual 14
million tonnes of sulfuric acid into the waters in the 1960s and thousands of
abandoned coal mines leached acid as well In Pennsylvania alone mine
drainage had blighted 2000 stream miles by 1967^^
472 Coal Burning
Combustion of coal like any other fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide
(CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) along with varying amounts of sulfur
dioxide (SO2) depending on where it was mined Sulfur dioxide reacts with
oxygen to form sulfur trioxide (SO3) which then reacts with water to form
sulfuric acid The sulfuric acid is returned to the Earth as acid rain Scrubbing
systems which use lime to remove the sulfur dioxide can reduce or eliminate
the likelihood of acid rain
Emissions from coal-fired power plants represent one of the two largest
sources of carbon dioxide emissions which have been implicated as the
primary cause of global warming Coal mining and abandoned mines also
emit methane another cause of global warming Since the carbon content of
coal is higher than oil burning coal is a more serious threat to the stability of
the global climate as this carbon forms CO2 when burned Many other
pollutants are present in coal power station emissions as solid coal is more
^ ltvwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 28-7-2007 ^ Ibid 30 Based on article by John Dyson Fire Down Below published in Readers Digest July 2004 For a
detailed discussion on the blunders of scientific assessments of ecological hazards see generally Michel Crichton State ofFear Harper Collins publishers 2007 Hammersmith London
137
difficult to clean than oil which is refined before use A study commissioned
by environmental groups claims that coal power plant emissions are
responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths annually in the United
States alone Modem power plants utilize a variety of techniques to limit the
harmfiikiess of their waste products and improve the efficiency of burning
though these techniques are not subject to standard testing or regulation in the
US and are not widely implemented in some countries as they add to the
capital cost of the power plant To eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants
carbon capture and storage has been proposed but has yet to be commercially
used
Coal and coal waste products including fly ash bottom ash boiler slag
and flue gas desulfurization contain many heavy metals including arsenic
lead mercury nickel vanadium beryllium cadmium barium chromium
copper molybdenum zinc selenium and radium which are dangerous if
released into the environment Coal also contains low levels of uranium
thorium and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into
the environment may lead to radioactive contamination While these
substances are trace impurities enough coal is burned that significant
amounts of these substances are released resulting in more radioactive waste
than nuclear power plants Mercury emissions fi-om coal burning are
concentrated as they work their way up the food chain and converted into
dangerous biological compounds that have made it dangerous to eat fish from
many waterways of the world Due to its scientifically accepted connection
Based on an Article Deadly power plants Study fuels debate appeared in site lthttpwwwnativevillageorgInspiration-Albuquerque20Conventionhtmgt Retrieved on September 4 2006
- Ibid Ibid
138
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
likely explanation for the name than that it was found on beaches having
fallen from the exposed coal seams above or washed out of underwater coal
seam outcrops These easily accessible sources had largely become exhausted
(or could not meet the growing demand) by the 13th century when
underground mining from shafts or adits was developed^ In London there is
still a Sea-coal Lane (off the north side of Ludgate Hill) where the coal
merchants used to conduct their business An alternative name was pit-coal
because it came from mines It was however the development of the
Industrial Revolution that led to the large-scale use of coal as the steam
engine took over from the water wheeldeg
46 Present Usage
Coal is used in different forms and in different purposes
461 Coal as Fuel
Coal is primarily used as a solid fuel to produce electricity and heat
through combustion World coal consumption is about 53 billion tons
annually of which about 75 is used for the production of electricity The
region including the Peoples Republic of China and India uses about 17
billion tonnes annually forecast to exceed 27 billion tonnes in 2025 The
USA consumes about 10 billion tons of coal each year using 90 of it for
generation of electricity Coal is the fastest growing energy source in the
See Supra note 3 Phillip A Lowe Wilburn C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi (1976) Technical Economies Synfuels and
Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process The American Society of Mechanical Engineers Publications USA p 110
Data published by International Energy Outlook September 9 2005 which made an exhaustive survey on energy consumption and the probable future demand
130
world accounting for 42 of the increase in energy used for the three years 1 9
ending December 2004
When coal is used for electricity generation it is usually pulverized and
then burned in a furnace with a boiler The furnace heat converts boiler water
to steam which is then used to spin turbines which turn generators and create
electricity The thermodynamic efficiency of this process has been improved
over time Standard steam turbines have topped out with some of the most
advanced reaching about 35 thermodynamic efficiency for the entire
process which means 65 of the coal energy is rejected as waste heat into
the surrounding environment Old coal power plants especially
grandfathered plants are significantly less efficient and reject higher levels
of waste heat The emergence of the supercritical turbine concept envisions
running a boiler at extremely high temperatures and pressures with projected
efficiencies of 46 with further theorized increases in temperature and
pressure perhaps resulting in even higher efficiencies^ Approximately 40
of the world electricity production uses coal The total known deposits
recoverable by current technologies including highly polluting low energy
content types of coal might be sufficient for 300 years use at current
consumption levels although maximal production could be reached within
decades A more energy-efficient way of using coal for electricity production
would be via solid-oxide fuel cells or molten-carbonate fuel cells (or any
oxygen ion transport based fuel cells that do not discriminate between fiiels
as long as they consume oxygen) which would be able to get 60-85
~ Ibid World Primary Energy Production by Source 1970-2004 lthttpwwwpowergenerationsiemenscomdownloadpoolPGE2005_BalancingEconomicspdfgt Article Balancing economics and environmental friendliness ~ the challenge for supercritical coal-fired power plants with highest steam parameters in the future Retrieved on 2006-10-23 ie lignite bituminous
131
combined efficiency (direct electricity + waste heat steam turbine) Currently
these fuel cell technologies can only process gaseous fuels and they are also
sensitive to sulfur poisoning issues which would first have to be worked out
before large scale commercial success is possible with coal As far as gaseous
fuels go one idea is pulverized coal in a gas carrier such as nitrogen Another
option is coal gasification with water which may lower fuel cell voltage by
introducing oxygen to the fuel side of the electrolyte but may also greatly
simplify carbon sequestration
462 Coking and Use of Coke
Coke is a solid carbonaceous residue derived from low-ash low-sulfur
bituminous coal from which the volatile constituents are driven off by baking
in an oven without oxygen at temperatures as high as 1000 degC so that the
fixed carbon and residual ash are fused together Metallurgic coke is used as a
fuel and as a reducing agent in smelting iron ore in a blast furnace Coke from
coal is grey hard and porous and has a heating value of 248million
Btuton Byproducts of this conversion of coal to coke include coal tar
ammonia light oils and coal gas Petroleum coke is the solid residue
obtained in oil refining which resembles coke but contains too many
impurities to be useful in metallurgical applications
463 Gasification
High prices of oil and natural gas are leading to increased interest in
BTU Conversion technologies such as gasification methanation and
liquefaction Coal gasification breaks down the coal into its components
Data based on Robert H Williams and Eric D Larson A Comparison of Direct and Indirect Liquefaction Technologies for Making Fluid Fuels from Coal Article appeared in Energy for Sustainable Development Vol-VII London
16 J g32 op
296 MJkg 132
usually by subjecting it to high temperature and pressure using steam and
measured amounts of oxygen This leads to the production of syngas a 1 0
mixture mainly consisting of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2)
In the past coal was converted to make coal gas which was piped to
customers to bum for illumination heating and cooking At present the safer
natural gas is used instead South Africa still uses gasification of coal for
much of its petrochemical needs
The Synthetic Fuels Corporation was a US government-funded
corporation established in 1980 to create a market for alternatives to imported
fossil fuels (such as coal gasification) The corporation was discontinued in
1985^
Gasification is also a possibility for future energy use as the produced
syngas can be cleaned-up relatively easily leading to cleaner burning than
burning coal directly (the conventional way) The cleanliness of the cleaned-
up syngas is comparable to natural gas enabling to bum it in a more efficient
gas turbine rather than in a boiler used to drive a steam turbine Syngas
produced by gasification can be CO-shifled meaning that the combustible CO
in the Syngas is transferred into carbon dioxide (CO2) using water as a
reactant The CO-shift reaction also produces an amount of combustible
hydrogen (H2) equal to the amount of CO converted into CO2 The CO2
concentrations (or rather CO2 partial pressures) obtained by using coal
gasification followed by a CO-shift reaction are much higher than in case of
direct combustion of coal in air (which is mostly nitrogen) These higher
See supra note 15 Ibid
133
concentrations of carbon dioxide make carbon capture and storage much more
economical than it otherwise would be
464 Liquefaction
Coal can also be converted into liquid fuels like gasoline or diesel by
several different processes The Fischer-Tropsch process of indirect synthesis
of liquid hydrocarbons was used in Nazi Germany for many years and is
today used by Sasol in South Africa Coal would be gasified to make syngas
(a balanced purified mixture of CO and H2 gas) and the syngas condensed
using Fischer-Tropsch catalysts to make light hydrocarbons which are further
processed into gasoline and diesel Syngas can also be converted to methanol
which can be used as a fuel fuel additive or further processed into gasoline
via the Mobil M-gas process
A direct liquefaction process Bergius process (liquefaction by
hydrogenation) is also available but has not been used outside Germany
where such processes were operated both during World War I and World War
II SASOL in South Africa has experimented with direct hydrogenation
Several other direct liquefaction processes have been developed among these
being the SRC-I and SRC-II (Solvent Refined Coal) processes developed by
Gulf Oil and implemented as pilot plants in the United States in the 1960s and
1970s Another direct hydrogenation process was explored by the NUS
Corporation in 1976 and patented by Wilburn C Schroeder The process
involved dried pulverized coal mixed with roughly lwt molybdenum
catalysis Hydrogenation occurred by use of high temperature and pressure
synthesis gas produced in a separate gasifier The process ultimately yielded a
For detailed discussion see generally lthttpwwwpowergenerationorggt retrieved on 25-12-2(X)7 Data based on Cleaner Coal Technology Programme (October 1999) Technology Status Report 01 Oshy
Coal Liquefaction Department of Trade and Industry (UK) Published by UK Government Press London
134
synthetic crude product Naptha a limited amount of C3C4 gas light-medium
weight liquids (C5-C10) suitable for use as fuels small amounts of NH3 and
significant amounts of C02
Yet another process to manufacture liquid hydrocarbons from coal is
Low Temperature Carbonization (LTC) Coal is coked at temperatures
between 450 and 700degC compared to 800deg to 1000degC for metallurgical coke
These temperatures optimize the production of coal tars richer in lighter
hydrocarbons than normal coal tar The coal tar is then further processed into
fuels The Karrick process was developed by Lewis C Karrick an oil shale
technologist at the US Bureau of Mines in the 1920s^^
All of these liquid fiiel production methods release carbon dioxide
(CO2) in the conversion process far more than is released in the extraction
and refinement of liquid fuel production from petroleum If these methods
were adopted to replace declining petroleum supplies carbon dioxide
emissions would be greatly increased on a global scale For future
liquefaction projects Carbon dioxide sequestration is proposed to avoid
releasing it into the atmosphere though no pilot projects have confirmed the
feasibility of this approach on a wide scale As CO2 is one of the process
streams sequestration is easier than from fuel gases produced in combustion
of coal with air where CO2 is diluted by nitrogen and other gases
Sequestration will however add to the cost
Coal liquefaction is one of the backstop technologies that could
potentially limit escalation of oil prices and mitigate the effects of
^ Data based on the article by Phillip A Lowe Wilbum C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi Technical
Economies Synfuels and Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process
(1976) The American Society of Mechanical Engineers USA
Ibid
^ See Supra note 21
135
transportation energy shortage that some authors have suggested could occur
under peak oil This is contingent on liquefaction production capacity
becoming large enough to satiate the very large and growing demand for
petroleum Estimates of the cost of producing liquid fuels from coal suggest
that domestic US production of fuel from coal becomes cost-competitive
with oil priced at around 35 USD per barrel (break-even cost) This price
while above historical averages is well below current oil prices This makes
coal a viable financial alternative to oil for the time being although
production is not great enough to make synfuels viable on a large scale
Among commercially mature technologies advantage for indirect coal
liquefaction over direct coal liquefaction are reported by Williams and Larson
(2003) Estimates are reported for sites in China where break-even cost for
coal liquefaction may be in the range between 25 to 35 USDbarrel of oil
47 Harmful Effects
Apart from the useful effects there are harmful effects also
471 Coal Mining
Coal mining causes a number of harmful effects When coal surfaces
are exposed pyrite (iron sulfide) also known as fools gold comes in
contact with water and air and forms sulfuric acid As water drains from the
mine the acid moves into the waterways and as long as rain falls on the mine
tailings the sulfuric acid production continues whether the mine is still
operating or not If the coal is strip mined the entire exposed seam leaChes
sulfuric acid leaving the infertile subsoil on the surface and begins to pollute
- ltwwwfindarticlesa)mparticlesgt retrieved on September 9 2007 ^Based on an article Welcome to Coal People Magazine appeared in the site ltwwwcoalindiacomgt
Retrieved on September 92007 Ibid
136
streams by acidifying and killing fish plants and aquatic animals that are
sensitive to drastic pH shifts
By the late 1930s it was estimated that American coal mines produced
about 23 million tonnes of sulfuric acid annually In the Ohio River Basin
where twelve hundred operating coal mines drained an estimated annual 14
million tonnes of sulfuric acid into the waters in the 1960s and thousands of
abandoned coal mines leached acid as well In Pennsylvania alone mine
drainage had blighted 2000 stream miles by 1967^^
472 Coal Burning
Combustion of coal like any other fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide
(CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) along with varying amounts of sulfur
dioxide (SO2) depending on where it was mined Sulfur dioxide reacts with
oxygen to form sulfur trioxide (SO3) which then reacts with water to form
sulfuric acid The sulfuric acid is returned to the Earth as acid rain Scrubbing
systems which use lime to remove the sulfur dioxide can reduce or eliminate
the likelihood of acid rain
Emissions from coal-fired power plants represent one of the two largest
sources of carbon dioxide emissions which have been implicated as the
primary cause of global warming Coal mining and abandoned mines also
emit methane another cause of global warming Since the carbon content of
coal is higher than oil burning coal is a more serious threat to the stability of
the global climate as this carbon forms CO2 when burned Many other
pollutants are present in coal power station emissions as solid coal is more
^ ltvwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 28-7-2007 ^ Ibid 30 Based on article by John Dyson Fire Down Below published in Readers Digest July 2004 For a
detailed discussion on the blunders of scientific assessments of ecological hazards see generally Michel Crichton State ofFear Harper Collins publishers 2007 Hammersmith London
137
difficult to clean than oil which is refined before use A study commissioned
by environmental groups claims that coal power plant emissions are
responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths annually in the United
States alone Modem power plants utilize a variety of techniques to limit the
harmfiikiess of their waste products and improve the efficiency of burning
though these techniques are not subject to standard testing or regulation in the
US and are not widely implemented in some countries as they add to the
capital cost of the power plant To eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants
carbon capture and storage has been proposed but has yet to be commercially
used
Coal and coal waste products including fly ash bottom ash boiler slag
and flue gas desulfurization contain many heavy metals including arsenic
lead mercury nickel vanadium beryllium cadmium barium chromium
copper molybdenum zinc selenium and radium which are dangerous if
released into the environment Coal also contains low levels of uranium
thorium and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into
the environment may lead to radioactive contamination While these
substances are trace impurities enough coal is burned that significant
amounts of these substances are released resulting in more radioactive waste
than nuclear power plants Mercury emissions fi-om coal burning are
concentrated as they work their way up the food chain and converted into
dangerous biological compounds that have made it dangerous to eat fish from
many waterways of the world Due to its scientifically accepted connection
Based on an Article Deadly power plants Study fuels debate appeared in site lthttpwwwnativevillageorgInspiration-Albuquerque20Conventionhtmgt Retrieved on September 4 2006
- Ibid Ibid
138
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
world accounting for 42 of the increase in energy used for the three years 1 9
ending December 2004
When coal is used for electricity generation it is usually pulverized and
then burned in a furnace with a boiler The furnace heat converts boiler water
to steam which is then used to spin turbines which turn generators and create
electricity The thermodynamic efficiency of this process has been improved
over time Standard steam turbines have topped out with some of the most
advanced reaching about 35 thermodynamic efficiency for the entire
process which means 65 of the coal energy is rejected as waste heat into
the surrounding environment Old coal power plants especially
grandfathered plants are significantly less efficient and reject higher levels
of waste heat The emergence of the supercritical turbine concept envisions
running a boiler at extremely high temperatures and pressures with projected
efficiencies of 46 with further theorized increases in temperature and
pressure perhaps resulting in even higher efficiencies^ Approximately 40
of the world electricity production uses coal The total known deposits
recoverable by current technologies including highly polluting low energy
content types of coal might be sufficient for 300 years use at current
consumption levels although maximal production could be reached within
decades A more energy-efficient way of using coal for electricity production
would be via solid-oxide fuel cells or molten-carbonate fuel cells (or any
oxygen ion transport based fuel cells that do not discriminate between fiiels
as long as they consume oxygen) which would be able to get 60-85
~ Ibid World Primary Energy Production by Source 1970-2004 lthttpwwwpowergenerationsiemenscomdownloadpoolPGE2005_BalancingEconomicspdfgt Article Balancing economics and environmental friendliness ~ the challenge for supercritical coal-fired power plants with highest steam parameters in the future Retrieved on 2006-10-23 ie lignite bituminous
131
combined efficiency (direct electricity + waste heat steam turbine) Currently
these fuel cell technologies can only process gaseous fuels and they are also
sensitive to sulfur poisoning issues which would first have to be worked out
before large scale commercial success is possible with coal As far as gaseous
fuels go one idea is pulverized coal in a gas carrier such as nitrogen Another
option is coal gasification with water which may lower fuel cell voltage by
introducing oxygen to the fuel side of the electrolyte but may also greatly
simplify carbon sequestration
462 Coking and Use of Coke
Coke is a solid carbonaceous residue derived from low-ash low-sulfur
bituminous coal from which the volatile constituents are driven off by baking
in an oven without oxygen at temperatures as high as 1000 degC so that the
fixed carbon and residual ash are fused together Metallurgic coke is used as a
fuel and as a reducing agent in smelting iron ore in a blast furnace Coke from
coal is grey hard and porous and has a heating value of 248million
Btuton Byproducts of this conversion of coal to coke include coal tar
ammonia light oils and coal gas Petroleum coke is the solid residue
obtained in oil refining which resembles coke but contains too many
impurities to be useful in metallurgical applications
463 Gasification
High prices of oil and natural gas are leading to increased interest in
BTU Conversion technologies such as gasification methanation and
liquefaction Coal gasification breaks down the coal into its components
Data based on Robert H Williams and Eric D Larson A Comparison of Direct and Indirect Liquefaction Technologies for Making Fluid Fuels from Coal Article appeared in Energy for Sustainable Development Vol-VII London
16 J g32 op
296 MJkg 132
usually by subjecting it to high temperature and pressure using steam and
measured amounts of oxygen This leads to the production of syngas a 1 0
mixture mainly consisting of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2)
In the past coal was converted to make coal gas which was piped to
customers to bum for illumination heating and cooking At present the safer
natural gas is used instead South Africa still uses gasification of coal for
much of its petrochemical needs
The Synthetic Fuels Corporation was a US government-funded
corporation established in 1980 to create a market for alternatives to imported
fossil fuels (such as coal gasification) The corporation was discontinued in
1985^
Gasification is also a possibility for future energy use as the produced
syngas can be cleaned-up relatively easily leading to cleaner burning than
burning coal directly (the conventional way) The cleanliness of the cleaned-
up syngas is comparable to natural gas enabling to bum it in a more efficient
gas turbine rather than in a boiler used to drive a steam turbine Syngas
produced by gasification can be CO-shifled meaning that the combustible CO
in the Syngas is transferred into carbon dioxide (CO2) using water as a
reactant The CO-shift reaction also produces an amount of combustible
hydrogen (H2) equal to the amount of CO converted into CO2 The CO2
concentrations (or rather CO2 partial pressures) obtained by using coal
gasification followed by a CO-shift reaction are much higher than in case of
direct combustion of coal in air (which is mostly nitrogen) These higher
See supra note 15 Ibid
133
concentrations of carbon dioxide make carbon capture and storage much more
economical than it otherwise would be
464 Liquefaction
Coal can also be converted into liquid fuels like gasoline or diesel by
several different processes The Fischer-Tropsch process of indirect synthesis
of liquid hydrocarbons was used in Nazi Germany for many years and is
today used by Sasol in South Africa Coal would be gasified to make syngas
(a balanced purified mixture of CO and H2 gas) and the syngas condensed
using Fischer-Tropsch catalysts to make light hydrocarbons which are further
processed into gasoline and diesel Syngas can also be converted to methanol
which can be used as a fuel fuel additive or further processed into gasoline
via the Mobil M-gas process
A direct liquefaction process Bergius process (liquefaction by
hydrogenation) is also available but has not been used outside Germany
where such processes were operated both during World War I and World War
II SASOL in South Africa has experimented with direct hydrogenation
Several other direct liquefaction processes have been developed among these
being the SRC-I and SRC-II (Solvent Refined Coal) processes developed by
Gulf Oil and implemented as pilot plants in the United States in the 1960s and
1970s Another direct hydrogenation process was explored by the NUS
Corporation in 1976 and patented by Wilburn C Schroeder The process
involved dried pulverized coal mixed with roughly lwt molybdenum
catalysis Hydrogenation occurred by use of high temperature and pressure
synthesis gas produced in a separate gasifier The process ultimately yielded a
For detailed discussion see generally lthttpwwwpowergenerationorggt retrieved on 25-12-2(X)7 Data based on Cleaner Coal Technology Programme (October 1999) Technology Status Report 01 Oshy
Coal Liquefaction Department of Trade and Industry (UK) Published by UK Government Press London
134
synthetic crude product Naptha a limited amount of C3C4 gas light-medium
weight liquids (C5-C10) suitable for use as fuels small amounts of NH3 and
significant amounts of C02
Yet another process to manufacture liquid hydrocarbons from coal is
Low Temperature Carbonization (LTC) Coal is coked at temperatures
between 450 and 700degC compared to 800deg to 1000degC for metallurgical coke
These temperatures optimize the production of coal tars richer in lighter
hydrocarbons than normal coal tar The coal tar is then further processed into
fuels The Karrick process was developed by Lewis C Karrick an oil shale
technologist at the US Bureau of Mines in the 1920s^^
All of these liquid fiiel production methods release carbon dioxide
(CO2) in the conversion process far more than is released in the extraction
and refinement of liquid fuel production from petroleum If these methods
were adopted to replace declining petroleum supplies carbon dioxide
emissions would be greatly increased on a global scale For future
liquefaction projects Carbon dioxide sequestration is proposed to avoid
releasing it into the atmosphere though no pilot projects have confirmed the
feasibility of this approach on a wide scale As CO2 is one of the process
streams sequestration is easier than from fuel gases produced in combustion
of coal with air where CO2 is diluted by nitrogen and other gases
Sequestration will however add to the cost
Coal liquefaction is one of the backstop technologies that could
potentially limit escalation of oil prices and mitigate the effects of
^ Data based on the article by Phillip A Lowe Wilbum C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi Technical
Economies Synfuels and Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process
(1976) The American Society of Mechanical Engineers USA
Ibid
^ See Supra note 21
135
transportation energy shortage that some authors have suggested could occur
under peak oil This is contingent on liquefaction production capacity
becoming large enough to satiate the very large and growing demand for
petroleum Estimates of the cost of producing liquid fuels from coal suggest
that domestic US production of fuel from coal becomes cost-competitive
with oil priced at around 35 USD per barrel (break-even cost) This price
while above historical averages is well below current oil prices This makes
coal a viable financial alternative to oil for the time being although
production is not great enough to make synfuels viable on a large scale
Among commercially mature technologies advantage for indirect coal
liquefaction over direct coal liquefaction are reported by Williams and Larson
(2003) Estimates are reported for sites in China where break-even cost for
coal liquefaction may be in the range between 25 to 35 USDbarrel of oil
47 Harmful Effects
Apart from the useful effects there are harmful effects also
471 Coal Mining
Coal mining causes a number of harmful effects When coal surfaces
are exposed pyrite (iron sulfide) also known as fools gold comes in
contact with water and air and forms sulfuric acid As water drains from the
mine the acid moves into the waterways and as long as rain falls on the mine
tailings the sulfuric acid production continues whether the mine is still
operating or not If the coal is strip mined the entire exposed seam leaChes
sulfuric acid leaving the infertile subsoil on the surface and begins to pollute
- ltwwwfindarticlesa)mparticlesgt retrieved on September 9 2007 ^Based on an article Welcome to Coal People Magazine appeared in the site ltwwwcoalindiacomgt
Retrieved on September 92007 Ibid
136
streams by acidifying and killing fish plants and aquatic animals that are
sensitive to drastic pH shifts
By the late 1930s it was estimated that American coal mines produced
about 23 million tonnes of sulfuric acid annually In the Ohio River Basin
where twelve hundred operating coal mines drained an estimated annual 14
million tonnes of sulfuric acid into the waters in the 1960s and thousands of
abandoned coal mines leached acid as well In Pennsylvania alone mine
drainage had blighted 2000 stream miles by 1967^^
472 Coal Burning
Combustion of coal like any other fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide
(CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) along with varying amounts of sulfur
dioxide (SO2) depending on where it was mined Sulfur dioxide reacts with
oxygen to form sulfur trioxide (SO3) which then reacts with water to form
sulfuric acid The sulfuric acid is returned to the Earth as acid rain Scrubbing
systems which use lime to remove the sulfur dioxide can reduce or eliminate
the likelihood of acid rain
Emissions from coal-fired power plants represent one of the two largest
sources of carbon dioxide emissions which have been implicated as the
primary cause of global warming Coal mining and abandoned mines also
emit methane another cause of global warming Since the carbon content of
coal is higher than oil burning coal is a more serious threat to the stability of
the global climate as this carbon forms CO2 when burned Many other
pollutants are present in coal power station emissions as solid coal is more
^ ltvwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 28-7-2007 ^ Ibid 30 Based on article by John Dyson Fire Down Below published in Readers Digest July 2004 For a
detailed discussion on the blunders of scientific assessments of ecological hazards see generally Michel Crichton State ofFear Harper Collins publishers 2007 Hammersmith London
137
difficult to clean than oil which is refined before use A study commissioned
by environmental groups claims that coal power plant emissions are
responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths annually in the United
States alone Modem power plants utilize a variety of techniques to limit the
harmfiikiess of their waste products and improve the efficiency of burning
though these techniques are not subject to standard testing or regulation in the
US and are not widely implemented in some countries as they add to the
capital cost of the power plant To eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants
carbon capture and storage has been proposed but has yet to be commercially
used
Coal and coal waste products including fly ash bottom ash boiler slag
and flue gas desulfurization contain many heavy metals including arsenic
lead mercury nickel vanadium beryllium cadmium barium chromium
copper molybdenum zinc selenium and radium which are dangerous if
released into the environment Coal also contains low levels of uranium
thorium and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into
the environment may lead to radioactive contamination While these
substances are trace impurities enough coal is burned that significant
amounts of these substances are released resulting in more radioactive waste
than nuclear power plants Mercury emissions fi-om coal burning are
concentrated as they work their way up the food chain and converted into
dangerous biological compounds that have made it dangerous to eat fish from
many waterways of the world Due to its scientifically accepted connection
Based on an Article Deadly power plants Study fuels debate appeared in site lthttpwwwnativevillageorgInspiration-Albuquerque20Conventionhtmgt Retrieved on September 4 2006
- Ibid Ibid
138
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
combined efficiency (direct electricity + waste heat steam turbine) Currently
these fuel cell technologies can only process gaseous fuels and they are also
sensitive to sulfur poisoning issues which would first have to be worked out
before large scale commercial success is possible with coal As far as gaseous
fuels go one idea is pulverized coal in a gas carrier such as nitrogen Another
option is coal gasification with water which may lower fuel cell voltage by
introducing oxygen to the fuel side of the electrolyte but may also greatly
simplify carbon sequestration
462 Coking and Use of Coke
Coke is a solid carbonaceous residue derived from low-ash low-sulfur
bituminous coal from which the volatile constituents are driven off by baking
in an oven without oxygen at temperatures as high as 1000 degC so that the
fixed carbon and residual ash are fused together Metallurgic coke is used as a
fuel and as a reducing agent in smelting iron ore in a blast furnace Coke from
coal is grey hard and porous and has a heating value of 248million
Btuton Byproducts of this conversion of coal to coke include coal tar
ammonia light oils and coal gas Petroleum coke is the solid residue
obtained in oil refining which resembles coke but contains too many
impurities to be useful in metallurgical applications
463 Gasification
High prices of oil and natural gas are leading to increased interest in
BTU Conversion technologies such as gasification methanation and
liquefaction Coal gasification breaks down the coal into its components
Data based on Robert H Williams and Eric D Larson A Comparison of Direct and Indirect Liquefaction Technologies for Making Fluid Fuels from Coal Article appeared in Energy for Sustainable Development Vol-VII London
16 J g32 op
296 MJkg 132
usually by subjecting it to high temperature and pressure using steam and
measured amounts of oxygen This leads to the production of syngas a 1 0
mixture mainly consisting of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2)
In the past coal was converted to make coal gas which was piped to
customers to bum for illumination heating and cooking At present the safer
natural gas is used instead South Africa still uses gasification of coal for
much of its petrochemical needs
The Synthetic Fuels Corporation was a US government-funded
corporation established in 1980 to create a market for alternatives to imported
fossil fuels (such as coal gasification) The corporation was discontinued in
1985^
Gasification is also a possibility for future energy use as the produced
syngas can be cleaned-up relatively easily leading to cleaner burning than
burning coal directly (the conventional way) The cleanliness of the cleaned-
up syngas is comparable to natural gas enabling to bum it in a more efficient
gas turbine rather than in a boiler used to drive a steam turbine Syngas
produced by gasification can be CO-shifled meaning that the combustible CO
in the Syngas is transferred into carbon dioxide (CO2) using water as a
reactant The CO-shift reaction also produces an amount of combustible
hydrogen (H2) equal to the amount of CO converted into CO2 The CO2
concentrations (or rather CO2 partial pressures) obtained by using coal
gasification followed by a CO-shift reaction are much higher than in case of
direct combustion of coal in air (which is mostly nitrogen) These higher
See supra note 15 Ibid
133
concentrations of carbon dioxide make carbon capture and storage much more
economical than it otherwise would be
464 Liquefaction
Coal can also be converted into liquid fuels like gasoline or diesel by
several different processes The Fischer-Tropsch process of indirect synthesis
of liquid hydrocarbons was used in Nazi Germany for many years and is
today used by Sasol in South Africa Coal would be gasified to make syngas
(a balanced purified mixture of CO and H2 gas) and the syngas condensed
using Fischer-Tropsch catalysts to make light hydrocarbons which are further
processed into gasoline and diesel Syngas can also be converted to methanol
which can be used as a fuel fuel additive or further processed into gasoline
via the Mobil M-gas process
A direct liquefaction process Bergius process (liquefaction by
hydrogenation) is also available but has not been used outside Germany
where such processes were operated both during World War I and World War
II SASOL in South Africa has experimented with direct hydrogenation
Several other direct liquefaction processes have been developed among these
being the SRC-I and SRC-II (Solvent Refined Coal) processes developed by
Gulf Oil and implemented as pilot plants in the United States in the 1960s and
1970s Another direct hydrogenation process was explored by the NUS
Corporation in 1976 and patented by Wilburn C Schroeder The process
involved dried pulverized coal mixed with roughly lwt molybdenum
catalysis Hydrogenation occurred by use of high temperature and pressure
synthesis gas produced in a separate gasifier The process ultimately yielded a
For detailed discussion see generally lthttpwwwpowergenerationorggt retrieved on 25-12-2(X)7 Data based on Cleaner Coal Technology Programme (October 1999) Technology Status Report 01 Oshy
Coal Liquefaction Department of Trade and Industry (UK) Published by UK Government Press London
134
synthetic crude product Naptha a limited amount of C3C4 gas light-medium
weight liquids (C5-C10) suitable for use as fuels small amounts of NH3 and
significant amounts of C02
Yet another process to manufacture liquid hydrocarbons from coal is
Low Temperature Carbonization (LTC) Coal is coked at temperatures
between 450 and 700degC compared to 800deg to 1000degC for metallurgical coke
These temperatures optimize the production of coal tars richer in lighter
hydrocarbons than normal coal tar The coal tar is then further processed into
fuels The Karrick process was developed by Lewis C Karrick an oil shale
technologist at the US Bureau of Mines in the 1920s^^
All of these liquid fiiel production methods release carbon dioxide
(CO2) in the conversion process far more than is released in the extraction
and refinement of liquid fuel production from petroleum If these methods
were adopted to replace declining petroleum supplies carbon dioxide
emissions would be greatly increased on a global scale For future
liquefaction projects Carbon dioxide sequestration is proposed to avoid
releasing it into the atmosphere though no pilot projects have confirmed the
feasibility of this approach on a wide scale As CO2 is one of the process
streams sequestration is easier than from fuel gases produced in combustion
of coal with air where CO2 is diluted by nitrogen and other gases
Sequestration will however add to the cost
Coal liquefaction is one of the backstop technologies that could
potentially limit escalation of oil prices and mitigate the effects of
^ Data based on the article by Phillip A Lowe Wilbum C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi Technical
Economies Synfuels and Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process
(1976) The American Society of Mechanical Engineers USA
Ibid
^ See Supra note 21
135
transportation energy shortage that some authors have suggested could occur
under peak oil This is contingent on liquefaction production capacity
becoming large enough to satiate the very large and growing demand for
petroleum Estimates of the cost of producing liquid fuels from coal suggest
that domestic US production of fuel from coal becomes cost-competitive
with oil priced at around 35 USD per barrel (break-even cost) This price
while above historical averages is well below current oil prices This makes
coal a viable financial alternative to oil for the time being although
production is not great enough to make synfuels viable on a large scale
Among commercially mature technologies advantage for indirect coal
liquefaction over direct coal liquefaction are reported by Williams and Larson
(2003) Estimates are reported for sites in China where break-even cost for
coal liquefaction may be in the range between 25 to 35 USDbarrel of oil
47 Harmful Effects
Apart from the useful effects there are harmful effects also
471 Coal Mining
Coal mining causes a number of harmful effects When coal surfaces
are exposed pyrite (iron sulfide) also known as fools gold comes in
contact with water and air and forms sulfuric acid As water drains from the
mine the acid moves into the waterways and as long as rain falls on the mine
tailings the sulfuric acid production continues whether the mine is still
operating or not If the coal is strip mined the entire exposed seam leaChes
sulfuric acid leaving the infertile subsoil on the surface and begins to pollute
- ltwwwfindarticlesa)mparticlesgt retrieved on September 9 2007 ^Based on an article Welcome to Coal People Magazine appeared in the site ltwwwcoalindiacomgt
Retrieved on September 92007 Ibid
136
streams by acidifying and killing fish plants and aquatic animals that are
sensitive to drastic pH shifts
By the late 1930s it was estimated that American coal mines produced
about 23 million tonnes of sulfuric acid annually In the Ohio River Basin
where twelve hundred operating coal mines drained an estimated annual 14
million tonnes of sulfuric acid into the waters in the 1960s and thousands of
abandoned coal mines leached acid as well In Pennsylvania alone mine
drainage had blighted 2000 stream miles by 1967^^
472 Coal Burning
Combustion of coal like any other fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide
(CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) along with varying amounts of sulfur
dioxide (SO2) depending on where it was mined Sulfur dioxide reacts with
oxygen to form sulfur trioxide (SO3) which then reacts with water to form
sulfuric acid The sulfuric acid is returned to the Earth as acid rain Scrubbing
systems which use lime to remove the sulfur dioxide can reduce or eliminate
the likelihood of acid rain
Emissions from coal-fired power plants represent one of the two largest
sources of carbon dioxide emissions which have been implicated as the
primary cause of global warming Coal mining and abandoned mines also
emit methane another cause of global warming Since the carbon content of
coal is higher than oil burning coal is a more serious threat to the stability of
the global climate as this carbon forms CO2 when burned Many other
pollutants are present in coal power station emissions as solid coal is more
^ ltvwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 28-7-2007 ^ Ibid 30 Based on article by John Dyson Fire Down Below published in Readers Digest July 2004 For a
detailed discussion on the blunders of scientific assessments of ecological hazards see generally Michel Crichton State ofFear Harper Collins publishers 2007 Hammersmith London
137
difficult to clean than oil which is refined before use A study commissioned
by environmental groups claims that coal power plant emissions are
responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths annually in the United
States alone Modem power plants utilize a variety of techniques to limit the
harmfiikiess of their waste products and improve the efficiency of burning
though these techniques are not subject to standard testing or regulation in the
US and are not widely implemented in some countries as they add to the
capital cost of the power plant To eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants
carbon capture and storage has been proposed but has yet to be commercially
used
Coal and coal waste products including fly ash bottom ash boiler slag
and flue gas desulfurization contain many heavy metals including arsenic
lead mercury nickel vanadium beryllium cadmium barium chromium
copper molybdenum zinc selenium and radium which are dangerous if
released into the environment Coal also contains low levels of uranium
thorium and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into
the environment may lead to radioactive contamination While these
substances are trace impurities enough coal is burned that significant
amounts of these substances are released resulting in more radioactive waste
than nuclear power plants Mercury emissions fi-om coal burning are
concentrated as they work their way up the food chain and converted into
dangerous biological compounds that have made it dangerous to eat fish from
many waterways of the world Due to its scientifically accepted connection
Based on an Article Deadly power plants Study fuels debate appeared in site lthttpwwwnativevillageorgInspiration-Albuquerque20Conventionhtmgt Retrieved on September 4 2006
- Ibid Ibid
138
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
usually by subjecting it to high temperature and pressure using steam and
measured amounts of oxygen This leads to the production of syngas a 1 0
mixture mainly consisting of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2)
In the past coal was converted to make coal gas which was piped to
customers to bum for illumination heating and cooking At present the safer
natural gas is used instead South Africa still uses gasification of coal for
much of its petrochemical needs
The Synthetic Fuels Corporation was a US government-funded
corporation established in 1980 to create a market for alternatives to imported
fossil fuels (such as coal gasification) The corporation was discontinued in
1985^
Gasification is also a possibility for future energy use as the produced
syngas can be cleaned-up relatively easily leading to cleaner burning than
burning coal directly (the conventional way) The cleanliness of the cleaned-
up syngas is comparable to natural gas enabling to bum it in a more efficient
gas turbine rather than in a boiler used to drive a steam turbine Syngas
produced by gasification can be CO-shifled meaning that the combustible CO
in the Syngas is transferred into carbon dioxide (CO2) using water as a
reactant The CO-shift reaction also produces an amount of combustible
hydrogen (H2) equal to the amount of CO converted into CO2 The CO2
concentrations (or rather CO2 partial pressures) obtained by using coal
gasification followed by a CO-shift reaction are much higher than in case of
direct combustion of coal in air (which is mostly nitrogen) These higher
See supra note 15 Ibid
133
concentrations of carbon dioxide make carbon capture and storage much more
economical than it otherwise would be
464 Liquefaction
Coal can also be converted into liquid fuels like gasoline or diesel by
several different processes The Fischer-Tropsch process of indirect synthesis
of liquid hydrocarbons was used in Nazi Germany for many years and is
today used by Sasol in South Africa Coal would be gasified to make syngas
(a balanced purified mixture of CO and H2 gas) and the syngas condensed
using Fischer-Tropsch catalysts to make light hydrocarbons which are further
processed into gasoline and diesel Syngas can also be converted to methanol
which can be used as a fuel fuel additive or further processed into gasoline
via the Mobil M-gas process
A direct liquefaction process Bergius process (liquefaction by
hydrogenation) is also available but has not been used outside Germany
where such processes were operated both during World War I and World War
II SASOL in South Africa has experimented with direct hydrogenation
Several other direct liquefaction processes have been developed among these
being the SRC-I and SRC-II (Solvent Refined Coal) processes developed by
Gulf Oil and implemented as pilot plants in the United States in the 1960s and
1970s Another direct hydrogenation process was explored by the NUS
Corporation in 1976 and patented by Wilburn C Schroeder The process
involved dried pulverized coal mixed with roughly lwt molybdenum
catalysis Hydrogenation occurred by use of high temperature and pressure
synthesis gas produced in a separate gasifier The process ultimately yielded a
For detailed discussion see generally lthttpwwwpowergenerationorggt retrieved on 25-12-2(X)7 Data based on Cleaner Coal Technology Programme (October 1999) Technology Status Report 01 Oshy
Coal Liquefaction Department of Trade and Industry (UK) Published by UK Government Press London
134
synthetic crude product Naptha a limited amount of C3C4 gas light-medium
weight liquids (C5-C10) suitable for use as fuels small amounts of NH3 and
significant amounts of C02
Yet another process to manufacture liquid hydrocarbons from coal is
Low Temperature Carbonization (LTC) Coal is coked at temperatures
between 450 and 700degC compared to 800deg to 1000degC for metallurgical coke
These temperatures optimize the production of coal tars richer in lighter
hydrocarbons than normal coal tar The coal tar is then further processed into
fuels The Karrick process was developed by Lewis C Karrick an oil shale
technologist at the US Bureau of Mines in the 1920s^^
All of these liquid fiiel production methods release carbon dioxide
(CO2) in the conversion process far more than is released in the extraction
and refinement of liquid fuel production from petroleum If these methods
were adopted to replace declining petroleum supplies carbon dioxide
emissions would be greatly increased on a global scale For future
liquefaction projects Carbon dioxide sequestration is proposed to avoid
releasing it into the atmosphere though no pilot projects have confirmed the
feasibility of this approach on a wide scale As CO2 is one of the process
streams sequestration is easier than from fuel gases produced in combustion
of coal with air where CO2 is diluted by nitrogen and other gases
Sequestration will however add to the cost
Coal liquefaction is one of the backstop technologies that could
potentially limit escalation of oil prices and mitigate the effects of
^ Data based on the article by Phillip A Lowe Wilbum C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi Technical
Economies Synfuels and Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process
(1976) The American Society of Mechanical Engineers USA
Ibid
^ See Supra note 21
135
transportation energy shortage that some authors have suggested could occur
under peak oil This is contingent on liquefaction production capacity
becoming large enough to satiate the very large and growing demand for
petroleum Estimates of the cost of producing liquid fuels from coal suggest
that domestic US production of fuel from coal becomes cost-competitive
with oil priced at around 35 USD per barrel (break-even cost) This price
while above historical averages is well below current oil prices This makes
coal a viable financial alternative to oil for the time being although
production is not great enough to make synfuels viable on a large scale
Among commercially mature technologies advantage for indirect coal
liquefaction over direct coal liquefaction are reported by Williams and Larson
(2003) Estimates are reported for sites in China where break-even cost for
coal liquefaction may be in the range between 25 to 35 USDbarrel of oil
47 Harmful Effects
Apart from the useful effects there are harmful effects also
471 Coal Mining
Coal mining causes a number of harmful effects When coal surfaces
are exposed pyrite (iron sulfide) also known as fools gold comes in
contact with water and air and forms sulfuric acid As water drains from the
mine the acid moves into the waterways and as long as rain falls on the mine
tailings the sulfuric acid production continues whether the mine is still
operating or not If the coal is strip mined the entire exposed seam leaChes
sulfuric acid leaving the infertile subsoil on the surface and begins to pollute
- ltwwwfindarticlesa)mparticlesgt retrieved on September 9 2007 ^Based on an article Welcome to Coal People Magazine appeared in the site ltwwwcoalindiacomgt
Retrieved on September 92007 Ibid
136
streams by acidifying and killing fish plants and aquatic animals that are
sensitive to drastic pH shifts
By the late 1930s it was estimated that American coal mines produced
about 23 million tonnes of sulfuric acid annually In the Ohio River Basin
where twelve hundred operating coal mines drained an estimated annual 14
million tonnes of sulfuric acid into the waters in the 1960s and thousands of
abandoned coal mines leached acid as well In Pennsylvania alone mine
drainage had blighted 2000 stream miles by 1967^^
472 Coal Burning
Combustion of coal like any other fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide
(CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) along with varying amounts of sulfur
dioxide (SO2) depending on where it was mined Sulfur dioxide reacts with
oxygen to form sulfur trioxide (SO3) which then reacts with water to form
sulfuric acid The sulfuric acid is returned to the Earth as acid rain Scrubbing
systems which use lime to remove the sulfur dioxide can reduce or eliminate
the likelihood of acid rain
Emissions from coal-fired power plants represent one of the two largest
sources of carbon dioxide emissions which have been implicated as the
primary cause of global warming Coal mining and abandoned mines also
emit methane another cause of global warming Since the carbon content of
coal is higher than oil burning coal is a more serious threat to the stability of
the global climate as this carbon forms CO2 when burned Many other
pollutants are present in coal power station emissions as solid coal is more
^ ltvwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 28-7-2007 ^ Ibid 30 Based on article by John Dyson Fire Down Below published in Readers Digest July 2004 For a
detailed discussion on the blunders of scientific assessments of ecological hazards see generally Michel Crichton State ofFear Harper Collins publishers 2007 Hammersmith London
137
difficult to clean than oil which is refined before use A study commissioned
by environmental groups claims that coal power plant emissions are
responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths annually in the United
States alone Modem power plants utilize a variety of techniques to limit the
harmfiikiess of their waste products and improve the efficiency of burning
though these techniques are not subject to standard testing or regulation in the
US and are not widely implemented in some countries as they add to the
capital cost of the power plant To eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants
carbon capture and storage has been proposed but has yet to be commercially
used
Coal and coal waste products including fly ash bottom ash boiler slag
and flue gas desulfurization contain many heavy metals including arsenic
lead mercury nickel vanadium beryllium cadmium barium chromium
copper molybdenum zinc selenium and radium which are dangerous if
released into the environment Coal also contains low levels of uranium
thorium and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into
the environment may lead to radioactive contamination While these
substances are trace impurities enough coal is burned that significant
amounts of these substances are released resulting in more radioactive waste
than nuclear power plants Mercury emissions fi-om coal burning are
concentrated as they work their way up the food chain and converted into
dangerous biological compounds that have made it dangerous to eat fish from
many waterways of the world Due to its scientifically accepted connection
Based on an Article Deadly power plants Study fuels debate appeared in site lthttpwwwnativevillageorgInspiration-Albuquerque20Conventionhtmgt Retrieved on September 4 2006
- Ibid Ibid
138
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
concentrations of carbon dioxide make carbon capture and storage much more
economical than it otherwise would be
464 Liquefaction
Coal can also be converted into liquid fuels like gasoline or diesel by
several different processes The Fischer-Tropsch process of indirect synthesis
of liquid hydrocarbons was used in Nazi Germany for many years and is
today used by Sasol in South Africa Coal would be gasified to make syngas
(a balanced purified mixture of CO and H2 gas) and the syngas condensed
using Fischer-Tropsch catalysts to make light hydrocarbons which are further
processed into gasoline and diesel Syngas can also be converted to methanol
which can be used as a fuel fuel additive or further processed into gasoline
via the Mobil M-gas process
A direct liquefaction process Bergius process (liquefaction by
hydrogenation) is also available but has not been used outside Germany
where such processes were operated both during World War I and World War
II SASOL in South Africa has experimented with direct hydrogenation
Several other direct liquefaction processes have been developed among these
being the SRC-I and SRC-II (Solvent Refined Coal) processes developed by
Gulf Oil and implemented as pilot plants in the United States in the 1960s and
1970s Another direct hydrogenation process was explored by the NUS
Corporation in 1976 and patented by Wilburn C Schroeder The process
involved dried pulverized coal mixed with roughly lwt molybdenum
catalysis Hydrogenation occurred by use of high temperature and pressure
synthesis gas produced in a separate gasifier The process ultimately yielded a
For detailed discussion see generally lthttpwwwpowergenerationorggt retrieved on 25-12-2(X)7 Data based on Cleaner Coal Technology Programme (October 1999) Technology Status Report 01 Oshy
Coal Liquefaction Department of Trade and Industry (UK) Published by UK Government Press London
134
synthetic crude product Naptha a limited amount of C3C4 gas light-medium
weight liquids (C5-C10) suitable for use as fuels small amounts of NH3 and
significant amounts of C02
Yet another process to manufacture liquid hydrocarbons from coal is
Low Temperature Carbonization (LTC) Coal is coked at temperatures
between 450 and 700degC compared to 800deg to 1000degC for metallurgical coke
These temperatures optimize the production of coal tars richer in lighter
hydrocarbons than normal coal tar The coal tar is then further processed into
fuels The Karrick process was developed by Lewis C Karrick an oil shale
technologist at the US Bureau of Mines in the 1920s^^
All of these liquid fiiel production methods release carbon dioxide
(CO2) in the conversion process far more than is released in the extraction
and refinement of liquid fuel production from petroleum If these methods
were adopted to replace declining petroleum supplies carbon dioxide
emissions would be greatly increased on a global scale For future
liquefaction projects Carbon dioxide sequestration is proposed to avoid
releasing it into the atmosphere though no pilot projects have confirmed the
feasibility of this approach on a wide scale As CO2 is one of the process
streams sequestration is easier than from fuel gases produced in combustion
of coal with air where CO2 is diluted by nitrogen and other gases
Sequestration will however add to the cost
Coal liquefaction is one of the backstop technologies that could
potentially limit escalation of oil prices and mitigate the effects of
^ Data based on the article by Phillip A Lowe Wilbum C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi Technical
Economies Synfuels and Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process
(1976) The American Society of Mechanical Engineers USA
Ibid
^ See Supra note 21
135
transportation energy shortage that some authors have suggested could occur
under peak oil This is contingent on liquefaction production capacity
becoming large enough to satiate the very large and growing demand for
petroleum Estimates of the cost of producing liquid fuels from coal suggest
that domestic US production of fuel from coal becomes cost-competitive
with oil priced at around 35 USD per barrel (break-even cost) This price
while above historical averages is well below current oil prices This makes
coal a viable financial alternative to oil for the time being although
production is not great enough to make synfuels viable on a large scale
Among commercially mature technologies advantage for indirect coal
liquefaction over direct coal liquefaction are reported by Williams and Larson
(2003) Estimates are reported for sites in China where break-even cost for
coal liquefaction may be in the range between 25 to 35 USDbarrel of oil
47 Harmful Effects
Apart from the useful effects there are harmful effects also
471 Coal Mining
Coal mining causes a number of harmful effects When coal surfaces
are exposed pyrite (iron sulfide) also known as fools gold comes in
contact with water and air and forms sulfuric acid As water drains from the
mine the acid moves into the waterways and as long as rain falls on the mine
tailings the sulfuric acid production continues whether the mine is still
operating or not If the coal is strip mined the entire exposed seam leaChes
sulfuric acid leaving the infertile subsoil on the surface and begins to pollute
- ltwwwfindarticlesa)mparticlesgt retrieved on September 9 2007 ^Based on an article Welcome to Coal People Magazine appeared in the site ltwwwcoalindiacomgt
Retrieved on September 92007 Ibid
136
streams by acidifying and killing fish plants and aquatic animals that are
sensitive to drastic pH shifts
By the late 1930s it was estimated that American coal mines produced
about 23 million tonnes of sulfuric acid annually In the Ohio River Basin
where twelve hundred operating coal mines drained an estimated annual 14
million tonnes of sulfuric acid into the waters in the 1960s and thousands of
abandoned coal mines leached acid as well In Pennsylvania alone mine
drainage had blighted 2000 stream miles by 1967^^
472 Coal Burning
Combustion of coal like any other fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide
(CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) along with varying amounts of sulfur
dioxide (SO2) depending on where it was mined Sulfur dioxide reacts with
oxygen to form sulfur trioxide (SO3) which then reacts with water to form
sulfuric acid The sulfuric acid is returned to the Earth as acid rain Scrubbing
systems which use lime to remove the sulfur dioxide can reduce or eliminate
the likelihood of acid rain
Emissions from coal-fired power plants represent one of the two largest
sources of carbon dioxide emissions which have been implicated as the
primary cause of global warming Coal mining and abandoned mines also
emit methane another cause of global warming Since the carbon content of
coal is higher than oil burning coal is a more serious threat to the stability of
the global climate as this carbon forms CO2 when burned Many other
pollutants are present in coal power station emissions as solid coal is more
^ ltvwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 28-7-2007 ^ Ibid 30 Based on article by John Dyson Fire Down Below published in Readers Digest July 2004 For a
detailed discussion on the blunders of scientific assessments of ecological hazards see generally Michel Crichton State ofFear Harper Collins publishers 2007 Hammersmith London
137
difficult to clean than oil which is refined before use A study commissioned
by environmental groups claims that coal power plant emissions are
responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths annually in the United
States alone Modem power plants utilize a variety of techniques to limit the
harmfiikiess of their waste products and improve the efficiency of burning
though these techniques are not subject to standard testing or regulation in the
US and are not widely implemented in some countries as they add to the
capital cost of the power plant To eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants
carbon capture and storage has been proposed but has yet to be commercially
used
Coal and coal waste products including fly ash bottom ash boiler slag
and flue gas desulfurization contain many heavy metals including arsenic
lead mercury nickel vanadium beryllium cadmium barium chromium
copper molybdenum zinc selenium and radium which are dangerous if
released into the environment Coal also contains low levels of uranium
thorium and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into
the environment may lead to radioactive contamination While these
substances are trace impurities enough coal is burned that significant
amounts of these substances are released resulting in more radioactive waste
than nuclear power plants Mercury emissions fi-om coal burning are
concentrated as they work their way up the food chain and converted into
dangerous biological compounds that have made it dangerous to eat fish from
many waterways of the world Due to its scientifically accepted connection
Based on an Article Deadly power plants Study fuels debate appeared in site lthttpwwwnativevillageorgInspiration-Albuquerque20Conventionhtmgt Retrieved on September 4 2006
- Ibid Ibid
138
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
synthetic crude product Naptha a limited amount of C3C4 gas light-medium
weight liquids (C5-C10) suitable for use as fuels small amounts of NH3 and
significant amounts of C02
Yet another process to manufacture liquid hydrocarbons from coal is
Low Temperature Carbonization (LTC) Coal is coked at temperatures
between 450 and 700degC compared to 800deg to 1000degC for metallurgical coke
These temperatures optimize the production of coal tars richer in lighter
hydrocarbons than normal coal tar The coal tar is then further processed into
fuels The Karrick process was developed by Lewis C Karrick an oil shale
technologist at the US Bureau of Mines in the 1920s^^
All of these liquid fiiel production methods release carbon dioxide
(CO2) in the conversion process far more than is released in the extraction
and refinement of liquid fuel production from petroleum If these methods
were adopted to replace declining petroleum supplies carbon dioxide
emissions would be greatly increased on a global scale For future
liquefaction projects Carbon dioxide sequestration is proposed to avoid
releasing it into the atmosphere though no pilot projects have confirmed the
feasibility of this approach on a wide scale As CO2 is one of the process
streams sequestration is easier than from fuel gases produced in combustion
of coal with air where CO2 is diluted by nitrogen and other gases
Sequestration will however add to the cost
Coal liquefaction is one of the backstop technologies that could
potentially limit escalation of oil prices and mitigate the effects of
^ Data based on the article by Phillip A Lowe Wilbum C Schroeder Anthony L Liccardi Technical
Economies Synfuels and Coal Energy Symposium Solid-Phase Catalytic Coal Liquefaction Process
(1976) The American Society of Mechanical Engineers USA
Ibid
^ See Supra note 21
135
transportation energy shortage that some authors have suggested could occur
under peak oil This is contingent on liquefaction production capacity
becoming large enough to satiate the very large and growing demand for
petroleum Estimates of the cost of producing liquid fuels from coal suggest
that domestic US production of fuel from coal becomes cost-competitive
with oil priced at around 35 USD per barrel (break-even cost) This price
while above historical averages is well below current oil prices This makes
coal a viable financial alternative to oil for the time being although
production is not great enough to make synfuels viable on a large scale
Among commercially mature technologies advantage for indirect coal
liquefaction over direct coal liquefaction are reported by Williams and Larson
(2003) Estimates are reported for sites in China where break-even cost for
coal liquefaction may be in the range between 25 to 35 USDbarrel of oil
47 Harmful Effects
Apart from the useful effects there are harmful effects also
471 Coal Mining
Coal mining causes a number of harmful effects When coal surfaces
are exposed pyrite (iron sulfide) also known as fools gold comes in
contact with water and air and forms sulfuric acid As water drains from the
mine the acid moves into the waterways and as long as rain falls on the mine
tailings the sulfuric acid production continues whether the mine is still
operating or not If the coal is strip mined the entire exposed seam leaChes
sulfuric acid leaving the infertile subsoil on the surface and begins to pollute
- ltwwwfindarticlesa)mparticlesgt retrieved on September 9 2007 ^Based on an article Welcome to Coal People Magazine appeared in the site ltwwwcoalindiacomgt
Retrieved on September 92007 Ibid
136
streams by acidifying and killing fish plants and aquatic animals that are
sensitive to drastic pH shifts
By the late 1930s it was estimated that American coal mines produced
about 23 million tonnes of sulfuric acid annually In the Ohio River Basin
where twelve hundred operating coal mines drained an estimated annual 14
million tonnes of sulfuric acid into the waters in the 1960s and thousands of
abandoned coal mines leached acid as well In Pennsylvania alone mine
drainage had blighted 2000 stream miles by 1967^^
472 Coal Burning
Combustion of coal like any other fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide
(CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) along with varying amounts of sulfur
dioxide (SO2) depending on where it was mined Sulfur dioxide reacts with
oxygen to form sulfur trioxide (SO3) which then reacts with water to form
sulfuric acid The sulfuric acid is returned to the Earth as acid rain Scrubbing
systems which use lime to remove the sulfur dioxide can reduce or eliminate
the likelihood of acid rain
Emissions from coal-fired power plants represent one of the two largest
sources of carbon dioxide emissions which have been implicated as the
primary cause of global warming Coal mining and abandoned mines also
emit methane another cause of global warming Since the carbon content of
coal is higher than oil burning coal is a more serious threat to the stability of
the global climate as this carbon forms CO2 when burned Many other
pollutants are present in coal power station emissions as solid coal is more
^ ltvwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 28-7-2007 ^ Ibid 30 Based on article by John Dyson Fire Down Below published in Readers Digest July 2004 For a
detailed discussion on the blunders of scientific assessments of ecological hazards see generally Michel Crichton State ofFear Harper Collins publishers 2007 Hammersmith London
137
difficult to clean than oil which is refined before use A study commissioned
by environmental groups claims that coal power plant emissions are
responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths annually in the United
States alone Modem power plants utilize a variety of techniques to limit the
harmfiikiess of their waste products and improve the efficiency of burning
though these techniques are not subject to standard testing or regulation in the
US and are not widely implemented in some countries as they add to the
capital cost of the power plant To eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants
carbon capture and storage has been proposed but has yet to be commercially
used
Coal and coal waste products including fly ash bottom ash boiler slag
and flue gas desulfurization contain many heavy metals including arsenic
lead mercury nickel vanadium beryllium cadmium barium chromium
copper molybdenum zinc selenium and radium which are dangerous if
released into the environment Coal also contains low levels of uranium
thorium and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into
the environment may lead to radioactive contamination While these
substances are trace impurities enough coal is burned that significant
amounts of these substances are released resulting in more radioactive waste
than nuclear power plants Mercury emissions fi-om coal burning are
concentrated as they work their way up the food chain and converted into
dangerous biological compounds that have made it dangerous to eat fish from
many waterways of the world Due to its scientifically accepted connection
Based on an Article Deadly power plants Study fuels debate appeared in site lthttpwwwnativevillageorgInspiration-Albuquerque20Conventionhtmgt Retrieved on September 4 2006
- Ibid Ibid
138
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
transportation energy shortage that some authors have suggested could occur
under peak oil This is contingent on liquefaction production capacity
becoming large enough to satiate the very large and growing demand for
petroleum Estimates of the cost of producing liquid fuels from coal suggest
that domestic US production of fuel from coal becomes cost-competitive
with oil priced at around 35 USD per barrel (break-even cost) This price
while above historical averages is well below current oil prices This makes
coal a viable financial alternative to oil for the time being although
production is not great enough to make synfuels viable on a large scale
Among commercially mature technologies advantage for indirect coal
liquefaction over direct coal liquefaction are reported by Williams and Larson
(2003) Estimates are reported for sites in China where break-even cost for
coal liquefaction may be in the range between 25 to 35 USDbarrel of oil
47 Harmful Effects
Apart from the useful effects there are harmful effects also
471 Coal Mining
Coal mining causes a number of harmful effects When coal surfaces
are exposed pyrite (iron sulfide) also known as fools gold comes in
contact with water and air and forms sulfuric acid As water drains from the
mine the acid moves into the waterways and as long as rain falls on the mine
tailings the sulfuric acid production continues whether the mine is still
operating or not If the coal is strip mined the entire exposed seam leaChes
sulfuric acid leaving the infertile subsoil on the surface and begins to pollute
- ltwwwfindarticlesa)mparticlesgt retrieved on September 9 2007 ^Based on an article Welcome to Coal People Magazine appeared in the site ltwwwcoalindiacomgt
Retrieved on September 92007 Ibid
136
streams by acidifying and killing fish plants and aquatic animals that are
sensitive to drastic pH shifts
By the late 1930s it was estimated that American coal mines produced
about 23 million tonnes of sulfuric acid annually In the Ohio River Basin
where twelve hundred operating coal mines drained an estimated annual 14
million tonnes of sulfuric acid into the waters in the 1960s and thousands of
abandoned coal mines leached acid as well In Pennsylvania alone mine
drainage had blighted 2000 stream miles by 1967^^
472 Coal Burning
Combustion of coal like any other fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide
(CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) along with varying amounts of sulfur
dioxide (SO2) depending on where it was mined Sulfur dioxide reacts with
oxygen to form sulfur trioxide (SO3) which then reacts with water to form
sulfuric acid The sulfuric acid is returned to the Earth as acid rain Scrubbing
systems which use lime to remove the sulfur dioxide can reduce or eliminate
the likelihood of acid rain
Emissions from coal-fired power plants represent one of the two largest
sources of carbon dioxide emissions which have been implicated as the
primary cause of global warming Coal mining and abandoned mines also
emit methane another cause of global warming Since the carbon content of
coal is higher than oil burning coal is a more serious threat to the stability of
the global climate as this carbon forms CO2 when burned Many other
pollutants are present in coal power station emissions as solid coal is more
^ ltvwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 28-7-2007 ^ Ibid 30 Based on article by John Dyson Fire Down Below published in Readers Digest July 2004 For a
detailed discussion on the blunders of scientific assessments of ecological hazards see generally Michel Crichton State ofFear Harper Collins publishers 2007 Hammersmith London
137
difficult to clean than oil which is refined before use A study commissioned
by environmental groups claims that coal power plant emissions are
responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths annually in the United
States alone Modem power plants utilize a variety of techniques to limit the
harmfiikiess of their waste products and improve the efficiency of burning
though these techniques are not subject to standard testing or regulation in the
US and are not widely implemented in some countries as they add to the
capital cost of the power plant To eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants
carbon capture and storage has been proposed but has yet to be commercially
used
Coal and coal waste products including fly ash bottom ash boiler slag
and flue gas desulfurization contain many heavy metals including arsenic
lead mercury nickel vanadium beryllium cadmium barium chromium
copper molybdenum zinc selenium and radium which are dangerous if
released into the environment Coal also contains low levels of uranium
thorium and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into
the environment may lead to radioactive contamination While these
substances are trace impurities enough coal is burned that significant
amounts of these substances are released resulting in more radioactive waste
than nuclear power plants Mercury emissions fi-om coal burning are
concentrated as they work their way up the food chain and converted into
dangerous biological compounds that have made it dangerous to eat fish from
many waterways of the world Due to its scientifically accepted connection
Based on an Article Deadly power plants Study fuels debate appeared in site lthttpwwwnativevillageorgInspiration-Albuquerque20Conventionhtmgt Retrieved on September 4 2006
- Ibid Ibid
138
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
streams by acidifying and killing fish plants and aquatic animals that are
sensitive to drastic pH shifts
By the late 1930s it was estimated that American coal mines produced
about 23 million tonnes of sulfuric acid annually In the Ohio River Basin
where twelve hundred operating coal mines drained an estimated annual 14
million tonnes of sulfuric acid into the waters in the 1960s and thousands of
abandoned coal mines leached acid as well In Pennsylvania alone mine
drainage had blighted 2000 stream miles by 1967^^
472 Coal Burning
Combustion of coal like any other fossil fuel produces carbon dioxide
(CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) along with varying amounts of sulfur
dioxide (SO2) depending on where it was mined Sulfur dioxide reacts with
oxygen to form sulfur trioxide (SO3) which then reacts with water to form
sulfuric acid The sulfuric acid is returned to the Earth as acid rain Scrubbing
systems which use lime to remove the sulfur dioxide can reduce or eliminate
the likelihood of acid rain
Emissions from coal-fired power plants represent one of the two largest
sources of carbon dioxide emissions which have been implicated as the
primary cause of global warming Coal mining and abandoned mines also
emit methane another cause of global warming Since the carbon content of
coal is higher than oil burning coal is a more serious threat to the stability of
the global climate as this carbon forms CO2 when burned Many other
pollutants are present in coal power station emissions as solid coal is more
^ ltvwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 28-7-2007 ^ Ibid 30 Based on article by John Dyson Fire Down Below published in Readers Digest July 2004 For a
detailed discussion on the blunders of scientific assessments of ecological hazards see generally Michel Crichton State ofFear Harper Collins publishers 2007 Hammersmith London
137
difficult to clean than oil which is refined before use A study commissioned
by environmental groups claims that coal power plant emissions are
responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths annually in the United
States alone Modem power plants utilize a variety of techniques to limit the
harmfiikiess of their waste products and improve the efficiency of burning
though these techniques are not subject to standard testing or regulation in the
US and are not widely implemented in some countries as they add to the
capital cost of the power plant To eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants
carbon capture and storage has been proposed but has yet to be commercially
used
Coal and coal waste products including fly ash bottom ash boiler slag
and flue gas desulfurization contain many heavy metals including arsenic
lead mercury nickel vanadium beryllium cadmium barium chromium
copper molybdenum zinc selenium and radium which are dangerous if
released into the environment Coal also contains low levels of uranium
thorium and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into
the environment may lead to radioactive contamination While these
substances are trace impurities enough coal is burned that significant
amounts of these substances are released resulting in more radioactive waste
than nuclear power plants Mercury emissions fi-om coal burning are
concentrated as they work their way up the food chain and converted into
dangerous biological compounds that have made it dangerous to eat fish from
many waterways of the world Due to its scientifically accepted connection
Based on an Article Deadly power plants Study fuels debate appeared in site lthttpwwwnativevillageorgInspiration-Albuquerque20Conventionhtmgt Retrieved on September 4 2006
- Ibid Ibid
138
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
difficult to clean than oil which is refined before use A study commissioned
by environmental groups claims that coal power plant emissions are
responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths annually in the United
States alone Modem power plants utilize a variety of techniques to limit the
harmfiikiess of their waste products and improve the efficiency of burning
though these techniques are not subject to standard testing or regulation in the
US and are not widely implemented in some countries as they add to the
capital cost of the power plant To eliminate CO2 emissions from coal plants
carbon capture and storage has been proposed but has yet to be commercially
used
Coal and coal waste products including fly ash bottom ash boiler slag
and flue gas desulfurization contain many heavy metals including arsenic
lead mercury nickel vanadium beryllium cadmium barium chromium
copper molybdenum zinc selenium and radium which are dangerous if
released into the environment Coal also contains low levels of uranium
thorium and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into
the environment may lead to radioactive contamination While these
substances are trace impurities enough coal is burned that significant
amounts of these substances are released resulting in more radioactive waste
than nuclear power plants Mercury emissions fi-om coal burning are
concentrated as they work their way up the food chain and converted into
dangerous biological compounds that have made it dangerous to eat fish from
many waterways of the world Due to its scientifically accepted connection
Based on an Article Deadly power plants Study fuels debate appeared in site lthttpwwwnativevillageorgInspiration-Albuquerque20Conventionhtmgt Retrieved on September 4 2006
- Ibid Ibid
138
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
with climate change the worlds reliance on coal as an energy source and
health concerns in areas with poor air pollution controls The Economist
recently labeled the burning of coal Environmental Enemy No 1
Coalization is the mass use of coal-fired power plants to produce electricity
as happens in China and USA
473 Energy Density
The energy density of coal is roughly 24 Mega joules per kilogram
The energy density of coal can also be expressed in kilowatt-hours the units
that electricity is most commonly sold in to estimate how much coal is
required to power electrical appliances The energy density of coal is 667kW-
hkg and the typical Thermodynamic efficiency of coal power plants is about
30 Of the 667 kW-h of energy per kilogram of coal about 30 of that can in
successfully be turned into electricity - the rest is waste heat As an
example running one 100 Watt computer for one year requires 876 kW-h
(100 W X 24 h X 365 days in a year = 876000 W-h - 876 kW-h)
Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption
8 7 6 k W bull h o u r s r ltbull i ^ 438 kg of eurooal ^ 967 |XiUiids of coal 20 kW bull ]iourskg
It takes 438 kg (967 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one fixll
year One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses
lthttpwwwrealclimateorgindexphparchivescategoryclimate-sciencegreenhouse-gases^ retrieved on 12-11-2007
Ibid Fisher Juliya Etwrgy Density of Coal The Physics Factbook Article appeared in
ltwwwphysicsfactbookdensitycoalhtmgt Retrieved on 25-08-2007 Coal power plants obtain approximately 20 kW-h per kg of burned coal ltwwwsciencehowstuffworkscomgt Retrieved on 2006-08-25
139
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
caused by resistance and heating in the power lines which is in the order of 5
- 10 depending on distance from the power station and other factprs^^
474 Coal Fires
There are hundreds of coal fires burning around the world Those
burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be
extinguished Fires can cause the ground above to subside combustion gases
are dangerous to life and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface
wildfires Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact
with a mine fire or surface fire A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of
coal seams on fire Coal fires in China bum 109 million tonnes of coal a
year emitting 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide This amounts to 2-3 of
the annual worldwide production of CO2 fiom fossil fuels or as much as
emitted fi^om all of the cars and light trucks in the United States^ In
Centralia Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United
States) an exposed vein of coal ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the
borough landfill located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit Attempts
to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful and it continues to bum underground
to this day The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a
volcano but the smoke and ash comes from a coal fire which may have been
burning for over 5500 years
The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the
Powder River Basin (Wyoming) and in western North Dakota is called
porcelanite which also may resemble the coal buming waste clinker or
Ibid Data retrieved from ltwwv coalfirecafdlrdeprqjectareasworld_wide_dislribution_enhtmlgt Article
titled Sino German Coal fire project Retrieved on September 9 2006 Committee on Resources-Index httpwwwf1reblmg0vtextdocumentspdfretrieved on 27-6-2(X)7 bull EHP 110-52002 Forum Overview about ITCs activities in China bull Buming Mountain Nature Reserve article retrieved from the site ltwvvwwikipediacomgt on 1 -1 -2008
140
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
volcanic scoria Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of
coal In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tonnes of coal
burned within the past three million years Wild coal fires in the area were
reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers
m the area
48 World Coal Reserves
In 2003 it was estimated that there was around one exagram ( 1 x 1 0
kg or 998 billion tons) of total coal reserves accessible using current mining
technology approximately half of it being hard coal The energy value of all
the worlds recoverable coal is 27 zettajoules^ which is expected to last
200years At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt
there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57
years
British Petroleum in its annual report 2006 estimated at 2005 end
there were 909064 million tons oiproven coal reserves worldwide (9236 x
10 kg) or 155 years reserve to production ratio This figure only includes
reserves classified as proven exploration drilling programs by mining
companies particularly in under-explored areas are continually providing
new reserves In many cases companies are aware of coal deposits that have
not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as proven
The United States Department of Energy uses estimates of coal
reserves in the region of 1081279 milhon short tons (981 x jo^ kg) which
is about 4786 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent) The amount of coal
Environmental Kducatkm- The High Plains article retrieved from lthttpwwwwsgsuwyoeduCoalCR01 -1 pdfgt
bull ltwwweiadoegovcoalhtmlgt Ibid
141
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
burned during 2001 was calculated as 2337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil
equivalent) which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day Were
consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 285
years As a comparison natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil
equivalent) and oil 76 million barrels per day during 2001
Of the three fossil fuels coal has the most widely distributed reserves
coal is mined in over 100 countries and on all continents except Antarctica
The largest reserves are found in the USA Russia Australia China India and
South Africa
Proved recoverable coal reserves at the end of - 2002 (million tonnes) 47
Country
Bituminous Sub-
(including Lignite bituminous
anthracite)
TOTAL
United States of America
Russian Federation
115891
49088
62200
101021
97472
33082
10450
249994
157010
Peoples Republic of China
115891
49088
62200 33700 18600 114500
India 82396 2000
37700
84396
Australia 42550 1840
2000
37700 82090
47 httpwwwvorldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalasp and
httpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdf
142
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
Germany 23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
66000
South Africa
23000
49520
16274
43000
1933
49520
Ukraine
23000
49520
16274 15946
43000
1933 34153
Kazakhstan 31000 3000 34000
Poland 20300 1860 22160
Serbia 64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732 16256
Brazil
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
11929
Colombia
64
6267
1460
11929
381
14732
6648
Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
871 2236
150
6578 Canada
Czech Republic
3471
2114
790
4300
3414
2236
150 5678
Indonesia
3471
2114
790
4300
1430 3150 5370
Botswana
3471
2114
790
4300 4300
Uzbekistan 1000 3000 4000
Turkey 278 761 2650 3689
Greece
278
2874 2874
143
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
Bulgaria 13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265 Pakistan
13 233
2265
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
2711
2265
Iran (Islamic Rep) 1710
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1710
United Kingdom
Romania
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1500
1457
Thailand
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1268
Mexico
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1211
Chile
1000
1
860
31
35
300
1150
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1181
Hungary 80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100
1097
Peru 960
80
2465
500
1421
1268
51
1017
100 1060
Kyrgyzstan 812 812
iJapan
Spain
Korea (Democratic Peoples
Rep)
773
200
300
400
300
60
773
660
600
144
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
New Zealand 33 206 333 572
Zimbabwe 502 502
Netherlands 497 497
Venezuela 479 479
Argentina 430
232 100
430
Philippines
430
232 100 332
Slovenia 40 235 275
Mozambique 212 212
Swaziland 208 208
Tanzania 200 200
Nigeria 21 169 190
Greenland 183 183
Slovakia 172 172
Vietnam 150 150
Congo (Democratic Rep) 88 88
145
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
Korea (Republic) 78
70
66
40
6
78
Niger
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66 Afghanistan
78
70
66
40
6
70
i66
Algeria
Croatia
78
70
66
40
6 33
40
39
Portugal 3 33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
France 22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Italy
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25 Austria
22
14
10
4
27
33
14
7
25
36
36
34
25
Ecuador
22
14
10
4
24 2A
Egypt (Arab Rep)
22
14
10
4
22 22
Ireland
Zambia
Malaysia
22
14
10
4
14
10
4
Central African Republic 3 3
146
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
Myanmar (Burma) 2
2
2
VI
i Malawi
2
2
2 2
iNew Caledonia
2
2 2
Nepal
Bolivia
2
1
2
1
i Norway
2
1
1 1
Republic of China 1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
i Sweden
TOTAL
1
519062
1
276301 189090
1
984453
1 4
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
49 Major Coal Exporters
Exports of Coal by Country and year (million tonnes)^^
Country 2003 12004
Australia 2381 ^2476
United States 430 480
South Africa 787 749
Former Soviet Union 410 i557
Poland 164 163
Canada 277 288
Peoples Republic of China 1034 1955
South America 578 659
Indonesia 1078 11314
Total 7139 7640
bull Ibid
148
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
410 History of Coal Mining
It is important to study the methods of coal mining which was practiced
in various countries
4101 Early History
Coal was first used in various parts of the world during the Bronze
Age 2000-1000 EC The Chinese began to use coal for heating and smelting
in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) They are credited with organizing
production and consumption to the extent that by the year 1000 AD this
activity could be called an industry In the 11th century the demands for
charcoal of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese iron industry led to
widespread deforestation With the advent of coal replacing charcoal in the
iron smelting process thousands of acres of prime timberland were spared in
China China remained the worlds largest producer and consumer of coal
until the 18th century Roman historians describe coal as a heating source in
Britannia
4102 Coal Mines in USA - 1900
The earliest use of coal in the Americas was by the Aztecs They used
coal not only for heat but as ornaments as well Coal deposits were discovered
by colonists in Eastern North America in the 18th century
Early coal extraction was small-scale the coal lying either on the
surface or very close to it Typical methods for extraction included drift
httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining http ww w ilo orgency clop aedi a
149
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
mining and bell pits In Britain some of the earliest drift mines (in the Forest
of Dean) date from the medieval period^^
As well as drift mines small scale shaft mining was used This took the
form of a bell pit the extraction working outward from a central shaft or a
technique called room and pillar in which rooms of coal were extracted with
pillars left to support the roofs Both of these techniques however left CO
considerable amount of usable coal behind
4103 The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 1700s and
later spread to Europe North America and Japan was based on the
availability of coal to power steam engines International trade expanded
exponentially when coal-fed steam engines were built for the railways and
steamships in the 1810-1840 era Coal was cheaper and much more efficient
than wood in most steam engines As central and northern England contains
an abundance of coal many mines were situated in these areas The small-
scale techniques were unsuited to the increasing demand with extraction
moving away from surface extraction to deep shaft mining as the Industrial
Revolution progressed
Ibid Ibid
wwwwikipediacomgt retrieved on 11-11 -2007 150
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
4104 Beginning of the 20th century
Coal miners 1910
Coal Production of the World around 1905^^
Country Year Short Tons
Europe
United Kingdom 1905 236128936
iGermany (coal) 121298167
iGermany (lignite) 52498507
iFrance 35869497
i Belgium 21775280
jAustria (coal) 12585263
iAustria (lignite) 22692076
1 Hungary (coal) 1904 1031501
Hungary (lignite) 5447283
iSpain 1905 3202911
i Russia 11904 19318000
IHolland 466997
i Bosnia (lignite) 540237
iRomania 110000
Serbia 1904 183204
Italy (coal and lignite) 1905 412916
Sweden 322384
Greece (lignite) 1904 466997
Asia
India 1905 8417739
Japan 1903 10088845
^lthttpwwwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
151
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
ISumatra 1904 1207280
i Africa
iTransvaal 1904 2409033
i Natal 1905 i 1129407
iCape Colony 11904 154272
lAmerica
i United States 1905 1350821000
iCanada 1904 17509860
i Mexico 700000
iPeru 1905 72665
iAustralasia
INew South Wales 19056632138
iQueensland 529326
iVictoria i 153135
iWestern Australia 127364
jTasmania 51993
I New Zealand 1585756
4105 Pre-World War II Mechanization
Since its introduction coal mining has played an intricate role in the
economic stability those who mined the coal itself and in turn the economic
stability of the United States This changed with the mechanization of the
industry beginning in the early 1900s Within the first forty years of the
twentieth century there was an increase of over sixty percent in the amount of
coal that was loaded mechanically as opposed to by way of man power This
152
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
statistics clearly demonstrates that with the advent of mechanized mining
over time less and less manual labor would be needed in the industry 55
As this trend continued the economic backbone of the coal-based
economy that supported the miners began to crumble under their feet As the
miners began to see their livelihood being ripped from their hands resistance
to mechanization grew As noted in historian Keith Dixs article Whats a
Coal Miner to Do one of the first machines to arrive at West Virginias
Kanawha field had to be escorted by a group of armed guards Dix also goes
on to say that The same machine introduced at a mine in Illinois was
operated at a slow speed because the superintendent feared labor troubles ^^
Eventually resistance of the miners was trumped by progress and
mechanization gradually replaced more and more manual laborers For
example by 1940 almost seventy percent of coal being loaded in West
Virginia one of the largest coal producing states at the time was being loaded
by machine
With the increase of mechanization in the mining industry came hard
times for the former miners and their families With no place to turn for a
steady income and fearing the inevitable debt brought on by the exploitive
scrip-based system put in place by mining companies miners were forced to
move to more urbanized areas and find steady jobs where they would be able
to earn a living that could support their wives and children A large number of
miners in this position chose to migrate to the mid-west in order to find work
^^ lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Based on an article by Keith Dix Whats a Coal Miner to Do appeared on
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
153
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
in industrialized areas such as Cleveland or Columbus Ohio Others chose to
move even further to places such as the southeastern US where jobs could
be found on the rapidly expanding peninsula of Florida While economic
prosperity brought on by the coming of the Second World War would
eventually pull America and its former mine workers out of economic
depression and presumably into the expanding middle class the initial pre-
World War II mechanization of the American coal mining industry without a
doubt changed the life of the American coal miner forever
411 History of Coal Mining Around the World
It is important to look into the details of history of coal mining in
different countries
4111 Britain
Deep shaft mining in the UK started to develop in the late 18th century
although rapid expansion occurred throughout the 19th and early 20th
Century The location of the coalfields helped to make the prosperity of
Lancashire of Yorkshire and of South Wales the Yorkshire pits which
supplied Sheffield were only about 300 feet deep Northumberland and
Durham were the leading coal producers and they were the sites of the first
deep pits In much of Britain coal was worked fi-om drifts or scraped off
when it outcropped Small groups of part-time miners used shovels and
primitive equipment Before 1800 a great deal of coal was left in places as
support pillars As a result in the deep Tyneside pits (300 to 1000 ft deep)
only about 40 percent of the coal could be extracted The use of wood props
to support the roof was an innovation first introduced about 1800 The critical
Ibid 154
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
factor was circulation of air and control of explosive gases At first fires were CO
burned to create air currents
Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to
meet the rapidly rising demand About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal in
was some 64 million tons (or about the output of a week and a half in the
twentieth century) After 1790 output soared reaching 16 million tons by
1815 The miners less menaced by imported labour or machines than were
the cotton operatives had begun to form unions and fight their grim battle for
wages against the coal owners and royalty-lessees
Coal extraction passed into Government control in 1947 although coal
had been a political issue since the early part of the century The need to
maintain coal supplies (a primary energy source) had figured in both world
wars As well as energy supply coal in the UK became a political issue due
to conditions under which colliers worked and the way they were treated by
colliery owners The main labour union was the National Union of
Mineworkers founded in 1888 which claimed 600000 members in 1908
The UK General Strike of 1926 was in part due to concerns colliers had
over working conditions Much of the old left of British politics can trace its
origins to coal-mining areas^
Technological development throughout the 19th and 20th century
helped both to improve the safety of colliers and the productive capacity of
lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006 Ibid ^ Op cit wikipediacom Ibid
155
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
collieries they worked In the late 20th century improved integration of coal
extraction with bulk industries such as electrical generation helped coal
maintain its position despite the emergence of alternative energies supplies
such as oil natural gas and from the late 1950s nuclear power used for
electricity More recently coal has faced competition from renewable energy
sources and bio-fiiels
Post World War II the coal industry in Britain was Nationalized and
remained in public ownership until the 1980s The 1980s and 1990s saw
much change in the UK coal industry with the industry contracting in some
areas quite drastically Many pits were uneconomic to work at current wage
rates compared to cheap North Sea oil and gas and in comparison to subsidy
levels in Europe The Miners Strike of 1984 failed to stop the governments
plans to shrink the industry The National Coal Board (by then British Coal)
was privatized by selling off a large number of pits to private concerns
through the mid 1990s and the mining industry disappeared almost
completely
Ib id ^^ Op cit wikipediacom
156
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
4112 USA
Coal Producing States 1889
ICoal Production State
(thousands of short tons)
Pennsylvania 81719
i Illinois 112104
lOhio 19977
iWest Virginia 6232
ilowa 4095
iAIabama 3573
hndiana 2845
iColorado 12544
i Kentucky i 2400
JKansas |2221
^Tennessee il926
Anthracite (or hard coal) clean and smokeless became the preferred
fuel in cities replacing wood by about 1850 Anthracite from the
Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region (and later from West Virginia) was
typically used for household uses because it is a high quality coal with few
^lthttpwvwworldenergyorgwecgeispublicationsreportssercoalcoalaspgt and lthttpwwweiadoegovoiafaeosupplementpdfsuptab_l 14pdfgt retrieved on 19-2-2007
157
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
impurities and stoves and furnaces were designed for it The rich
Pennsylvania anthracite fields were close to the Eastern cities and a few
major railroads like the Reading Railroad controlled the anthracite fields By
1840 hard coal output had passed the million-short ton mark and then
quadrupled by 1850^^
Bituminous (or soft coal) mining came later In the mid-century
Pittsburgh was the principal market After 1850 soft coal which is cheaper
but dirtier came into demand for railway locomotives and stationary steam
engines and was used to make coke for steel after 1870^^
Total coal output soared until 1918 before 1890 it doubled every ten
years going from 84 milhon short tons in 1850 to 40 million in 1870 270
million in 1900 and peaking at 680 million short tons in 1918 New soft coal
fields opened in Ohio Indiana and Illinois as well as West Virginia
Kentucky and Alabama The Great Depression of the 1930s lowered the
demand to 360 million short tons in 1932^^
After the Lattimer Massacre of 1897 and the Battle of Virden in Illinois
in 1898 the United Mine Workers (UMW) labor union was successfiil in its
strike against bituminous mines in the Midwest in 1900 However the unions
strike against the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national
political crisis in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise
solution that kept the flow of coal going and won higher wages and shorter
Dan Rotenberg In the Kingdom of Coal An American Family and the Rock That Changed the World (2005) Routledge United States of America p 441 Ibid at p443 ^Ibid
158
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
hours for the miners but did not include recognition of the union as a
bargaining agent
The UMW called strikes in Colorados coal fields one of which
resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 Neutralized by the dispatch of
federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre the
UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a
decade Meanwhile the organization grew stronger in the east until about
1920 when it collapsed after a national strike
In 1927 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led a state-wide
strike in Colorados coalfields which resulted in the Columbine Massacre
Immediately after that massacre Rocky Mountain Fuel Company announced
that it would recognize any union affiliated with the American Federation of
Labor In announcing this policy the company avoided recognizing the
radical IWW Thus the United Mine Workers was awarded its first contract
in Colorado
Under the leadership of John L Lewis the UMW became the dominant
force in the coal fields in the 1930s and 1940s producing high wages and
benefits Repeated strikes caused the public to switch away from anthracite
for home heating after 1945 and that sector collapsed
In 1914 at the peak there were 180000 anthracite miners by 1970 only
6000 remained At the same time steam engines were phased out in railways
and factories and bituminous was used primarily for the generation of
^^ Op cit Wikipediacom Ibid tradeIbid
159
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
electricity Employment in bituminous peaked at 705000 men in 1923 falling
to 140000 by 1970 and 70000 in 2003 Environmental restrictions on high-
sulfur coal and the rise of very large-scale strip mining in the west (especially
the Powder River Basin fields in Wyoming and adjacent states) caused the
sharp decline in underground mining after 1970 UMW membership among
active miners fell from 160000 in 1980 to only 16000 in 2005 as coal
mining became more mechanized and non-union miners predominated in the
new coal fields The American share of world coal production remained
steady at about 20 from 1980 to 2005^
4113 Canada
Canada had a small coal industry concentrated at Cape Breton in Nova
Scotia At its peak in 1949 25000 miners dug 17 million metric tons of coal
from mines The miners who lived in company towns were politically active
in lefl-wing politics Westray Mine closed in 1992 after an explosion killed 26
miners All the mines were closed by 2001 The United States always
supplied the coal for the industrial regions of Ontario By 2000 about 19 of
Canadas energy was supplied by coal chiefly imported from the US
4114 Germany
The first important mines appeared in the 1750s In 1782 the Krupp
family began operations near Essen After 1815 entrepreneurs in the Ruhr
Area which then became part of Prussia took advantage of the tariff zone
(Zollverein) to open new mines and associated iron smelters New railroads
Ibid lthttpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mininggt retrieved on 10-12-2006
160
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
were built by British engineers around 1850 Numerous small industrial
centers sprang up focused on ironworks using local coal The iron and steel
works typically bought mines and erected coking ovens to supply their own
requirements in coke and gas These integrated coal-iron firms
(Huettenzechen) became numerous after 1854 after 1900 they became
mixed firms called Konzern
The average output of a mine in 1850 was about 8500 short tons its
employment about 64 By 1900 the average mines output had risen to
280000 and the employment to about 1400 Total Ruhr coal output rose from
20 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 60 in 1900 and 114 in 1913 on
the verge of war In 1932 output was down to 73 million short tons growing
to 130 in 1940 Output peaked in 1957 (at 123) declining to 78 million short
tons in 1974^^
4115 Belgium
By 1830 when iron and later steel became important the Belgian coal
industry had long been established and used steam-engines for pumping The
Belgian coalfield lay near the navigable River Meuse so coal was shipped
downstream to the ports and cities of the Rhint-Meuse delta The opening of
the Saint-Quentin canal allowed coal to go by barge to Paris The Belgian
coalfield outcrops over most of its area and the highly folded nature of the
seams meant that surface occurrences of the coal were very abundant Deep
mines were not required at first so there were a large number of small
operations There was a complex legal system for concessions often multiple
Ibid Ibid
161
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
layers had different owners Entrepreneurs started going deeper and deeper In
1790 the maximum depth of mines was 220 meters By 1856 the average
depth in the area west of Mons was 361 and in 1866 437 meters and some
pits had reached down 700 and 900 meters one was 1065 meters deep
probably the deepest coal mine in Europe at this time Gas explosions were a
serious problem and Belgium had high fatality rates By the late 19th century
the seams were becoming exhausted and the steel industry was importing
some coal from the Ruhr
412 Disasters
Mining has always been dangerous because of explosions cave-ins
and the difficulty of rescue The worst single disaster in British coal mining
history was at Senghenydd in South Wales On the morning of 14 October
1913 an explosion and subsequent fire killed 436 men and boys Only 72
bodies were recovered The Monongah Mine disaster of Monongah West
Virginia 6 December 1907 was the worst mining disaster in American
History The explosion was caused by the ignition of methane (also called
black damp) which ignited the coal dust In all the hves of 362 men were
lost in the underground explosion
413 Report on Coal pollution by Green Peace Organization of Various
Coal Producing Countries
Green Peace International a NGO Organization in its report The True
Cost of Coal reports as follows^^
Coal burning has existed for centuries and its use as a fuel has been
recorded since the 1100s It powered the Industrial Revolution changing the
Ibid 76 httpenwikipediaorgwikiHistory_of_coal_mining The True Cost of Coal How people and the planet are paying the price for the worlds dirtiest fuel A report produced by Green Peace International found at lt wwwgreenpeaceorggt retrieved on 20-12-2008
162
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
course of first Britain and then the world in the process In the US the first
coal-fired power plant - Pearl Street Station - opened on the shores of the
lower East River in New York City in September 1882 Shortly thereafter
coal became the staple diet for power plants across the world^
There is now almost 40 per cent more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than before the industrial revolution Current Carbon dioxide
levels are higher than any point in the last 650000 years^
Further the report also says in its article Coal - A Dirty Fuel thats
destroying our Climate Coal burning contributes more to climate change than
any other fossil fuel Coal-fired power stations pump vast amounts of CO2
into the atmosphere each year 11 billion tonnes to be precise This amounts
to 72 of CO2 emissions from power generation and 4 1 of total global
emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels^
The report also talks about the contribution by India accounts for the
worlds greatest concentration of coal fires Raising surface temperatures and
toxic bi-products soil and air have turned the densely populated Raniganj
Singareni and Jharia coal fields into waste lands
With regard to coal in China the report says China is a big energy
producer and consumer Most f their energy is derived from coal China must
take on the responsibility to reduce pollution and emissions^^
The report says on South Africa which is the 6th largest producer of
coal and 7th largest consumer of coal In 2006 about 80 of South Africas
coal exports landed up in European power stations^
Ibid at p 5 of the report ^ Ibid at p 7 of the report Ibid at p II of the report Ibid at p27 of the report Ibid at p 43 of the report
163
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
The report further says that Coal wreaks havoc and destruction on the
planet and our health could be the understatement of the century Coal is
causing our planet harm Thats easy to see The damage costs right along its
chain of custody - from digging it out of the ground to what remains after it
has burnt
414 Subterranean Coal Fire
Fires are burning in thousands of underground coal seams from
Pennsylvania to Mongolia releasing toxic gases adding millions of tons of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and baking the earth until
vegetation shrivels and the land sinks Scientists and government agencies are
starting to use heat-sensing satellites to map the fires and try new ways to
extinguish them But in many instances particularly in Asia they are so
widespread and stubborn that miners simply work around the flames
There is geological evidence that grassland and forest fires lightning
and spontaneous combustion of coal have spawned such fires for hundreds of
thousands of years In Wyoming and northern China broad layers of earth are
composed of clinker the brittle baked rock left behind when subterranean
coal bums
But the frequency of coal fires appears to have risen experts say as
mining has exposed more and more deposits around the world to fires both
natural and set by people and the oxygen that feeds them
Increasingly scientists are saying the problem needs to be more
carefully assessed both as a potential contributor to global warming and
source of toxic air pollution A 1999 report by the Clean Coal Center of the
^^ Ibid at p 48 of the report Ibid at p 77 of the report ^ lohn Dyson Fgte Down Below Article published in Readers Digest July 2004 Ibid
164
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
International Energy Agency concluded that the biggest coal fires in China
and India particularly make a significant global impact These fires are
obviously pumping all noxious gases into the atmosphere and that is the
major threat to the world atmosphere and no one is aware of it ^
The coal fires are similar to those that smoldered for months beneath
the wreckage of the World Trade Center in that they involve buried fuels and
are sustained and intensified by slight drafts of air and heat locked into
surrounding rubble or rock Geologists and engineers who have studied coal
fires offered their expertise and specialized equipment like firefighting foams
to emergency officials in Lower Manhattan But firefighters at the scene stuck
mainly with the simplest method pouring endless streams of water on the
wreckage as work crews slowly removed layers of debris
Many coal fires start spontaneously when pyrite and other reactive
minerals in coal are exposed to oxygen They begin to release heat which if
not dissipated by air currents builds until the coal itself ignites
In Indonesia hundreds of coal fires erupted deep in the rain forests
when forest fires spread during an extreme drought in 1997 and scorched
exposed coal seams
Alfred E Whitehouse a fire expert for the federal Office of Surface
Mining now assigned to Indonesia said there were 700 such fires just in East
Kalimantan on the island of Borneo Some were extinguished by crews using
hand pumps and picks to isolate the hot spots But many are still burning
^ Opines Dr Glenn B Stracher a geologist and expert on coal fires at Kast Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia
^ Op cit John Dyson ^ Reports of Federal Office of Surface mining for detailed discussion see ltwwwfireblmgovusgt
165
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
The fires persist as long as there is the right mix of fuel oxygen and
heat Sometimes that can be a very long time One fire eating deep into an
Australian peak called Burning Mountain is believed to have been going
strong for 2000 years The mountain has often been mistaken for a
simmering volcano by passers-by although Australia has no volcanic
activity
In the United States a common cause of such fires has been the
burning of trash dumped into abandoned mines That is how the coal fire
became most familiar to many Americans started 40 years ago in Centralia a
town in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania Smoldering trash in a
dump ignited a coal seam The fire steadily crept through abandoned mine
tunnels forcing the federal government by 1984 to evict residents and
eventually pay $40 million to buy damaged land^
Centralia briefly gained national notoriety and then faded away Its
population shrank from 1100 to 40 Smoke and steam now rise from
overgrown backyards and cracked sunken streets marking the path of
subterranean fires that continue to consume buried coal Geologists say it
could bum for another hundred years
But Centralias is just one of dozens of fires that smolder unchecked
in old mines and coal seams around the country The federal Office of Surface
Mining has tallied nearly $1 billion in accumulated costs from coal fires
primarily in Pennsylvania West Virginia Utah Colorado Kentucky and
Wyoming And the coal fires in the United States are negligible compared
with those overseas In Chinas rich northern coal belt hundreds of
See supra note 80 Supra Note 81
Ibid 166
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
underground fires are burning upward of 200 million tons of coal each year
about 20 percent of the nations annual production The fires produce nearly
as much carbon dioxide the main gas linked to global warming as is emitted
each year by all the cars and small trucks in the United States ^
Only in the last few years have scientists begun a concerted effort to
map and monitor coal fires around the world and calculate how much
pollution they are producing For the moment the total is anyones guess
Geologists are developing ways to integrate maps of the heat of the earths
surface generated by satellites with geological maps to track coal fires in
northern China
Often a deep coal fire raises the surface temperatures by only a few
degrees even though the heat in the middle of the fire can easily exceed 1000
degrees But that subtle signal is enough to show up from space particularly
when other clues about coal deposits are combined with the heat data
Chinese geologists recently generated a map of Chinas coal fires that showed
a constellation of glowing orange spots spread across the countrys northern
coal belt which spans 3000 miles and is 400 miles wide
Further the important goal is to monitor the region continually from
space so spots that are growing warmer indicating intensifying fires can be
attacked by firefighters before the fires grow to the point where they cannot
be stopped
Ibid bull Opines Mrs Dr Anupma Prakash a geological mapping expert at the International Institute for Aerospace
Survey and Earth Sciences in the Netherlands retrieved from ltwwwcoaIfirecafdlrdeprojectareasworldwidedistribution htmlgt on 9-11-2007
Op cit Anupama Prakash Ibid
167
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
The important thing is to detect the rising heat anomahes ahead of
time Once they get going these buried fires are very hard to stop The coal
beds in Pennsylvania tend to generate particularly persistent fires because the
corrugated terrain there has many separate narrow coal seams that reach the
surface and the ground is heavily fractured allowing ample oxygen to reach
the coal Many parts of the state like the foundation of Centralia are also
riddled with old abandoned tunnels that carry air into the coal layers and
expose broad surfaces of coal to heat^^
For many years engineers and scientists have been experimenting
with a variety of ways to extinguish or control the fires Some small fires have
been snuffed by drilling holes and pumping in inert gases or foams that stifle
flames Others have been flooded by damming surface streams and creating
lakes over the burning coal
Some fires have been controlled by excavating deep trenches that cut
off the fires the same way a fire break in woodland can stop a forest fire from
spreading But in most cases the costs of such efforts outweigh the benefits
That was why Centralia picked up and moved and why another Pennsylvania
community Youngstown may suffer the same fate
Overseas however some of the fires are in densely populated regions
where hundreds of thousands of poor people live on the edges of open pits
that fume and flame In many such places the mining industry has simply
adapted to the situation working in and around the burning rock Parts of one
of Indias most important coal fields the Jharia mining complex which is
rich in low-sulfur coal used to produce coke for steel mills have been on fire
Opines Stanley R Michalski a senior staff geologist at GAI Consultants a firm in Monroeville that has for more than 20 years studied fires and drawn up firefighting plans from India to Centralia
Op Cit John Dyson 168
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
since 1916 In many places the walls of open-pit mines glow and hiss like
lava flows^^
The regions 150000 miners truck drivers train loaders and other
workers toil stolidly against a constant backdrop of orange flames and brown
smoke But the fires are far more than an inconvenience On Sept 10 1995
the walls of one mine complex collapsed after being progressively weakened
by fires Water from a nearby canal poured in and flooded the pits and
tunnels killing more than 60 miners
The population around the Jharia mines has grown from half a
million to 11 million since the early 1980s ^ A plan was drawn up to
modify the mining operations and constrain the fires But the bank never
released the money But this fire is so complicated and so widespread that
India could not really afford to extinguish it In the meantime the fires there
still bum and residents and mineworkers continue to adapt In places where
the ground cracks and slumps and smokes people simply dismantle their
mud-brick homes and move them somewhere else
Most of the scientists pessimistically concluding their research stating
that it is rather difficult to kill the fire
1 The result is loss of much needed energy of the world
2 These energy resources are merely wasted which are nonshy
renewable
Report submitted by Coal India Ltd to the Central Government ^ Op cit Dr Anupama Prakash whose doctoral thesis was an analysis of the fires Op cit Stanley R Michalski and also see httpwwwmail-archiveeomeristocracymerrymeetcommsg00038html From Donald Eastlake Date Fri 26 Apr 2002 081727 -0400 (EDT) lthttpwwwnytimeseom200201l5sciencel SFIRiihtmlgt retrieved on 15-12-2006
169
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170
3 Energy resources while being it is polluting the globe and also
vast contributory factors in reducing the age of the earth
The question to be answered is who is to regulate this hazardous
pollution It is important for the world to have a governing body to join
together by quelling the differences whether political social economical and
tackling the problem so as to not only extending the life of earth and also to
save the energy resources of the world for future generations
170