Photo 
Communities Opposed to New Coal at Hunterston
Environmental issues related to coal use
See also pages on health, human rights, coal mine accidents and general links
Climate change glossary: a very useful resource
These environmental issues are not only related to coal-fired power stations, but also to the production and supply of coal. This is a global issue, as coal is traded on the world market. Ayrshire Power, like other buyers, would purchase coal from many countries.
ForArgyll.com
Last year was a disastrous one for environmental litigants in the Scottish Courts. The second half of the year saw the widely reported failure of attempts to stop the Aberdeen Ring Road, a new coal-fired power station at Hunterston and the St Andrews West development plan. The third of these highlighted a major problem in such cases when the applicant, Mrs Penny Uprichard, had expenses of about £173,000 awarded against her. The result is a sorry story that reflects badly on our legal system and its ability to cope with environmental issues at a time when the countryside is faced with numerous applications for developments such as power lines, wind farms, opencast mines and fish farms and people are becoming more environmentally aware.
Ewan Kennedy: Legal issues for environmentalists 21st Jan 2012The Guardian
This year's UN climate negotiations are in Durban, South Africa. ... King coal is extending his kingdom. So dysfunctional is the world's response to climate change that every year, the dirtiest fuel of them all is generating a growing proportion of the world's energy. ...
When the talks began half a decade ago, 25 percent of the world's primary energy came from coal. The figure is now 29.6 percent. Between 2009 and 2010, global coal consumption grew by almost 8 percent. ...
Clean coal is a distant vision, which could someday be possible through a technology known as carbon capture and storage— in which CO2 is stripped from stack emissions, liquefied and buried underground. But large-scale deployment of what would be a massive new industry is at least a couple of decades — and tens of billions of R&D dollars — away. And industry will only do it if forced.
Why the world is burning more coal
BBC
Coal burning in western Europe and North America has been a prime source of heavy metal pollution in the Arctic.
Scientists plotted levels of thallium, cadmium and lead in a Greenland ice core and linked them to other chemicals indicating coal as the main origin.
These substances accumulate in the bodies of plants and animals living in the region, including whales, polar bears and caribou.
Measurements from ice cores suggest that soot released by industrial activities has influenced climate change in the Arctic.
Soot 'influences Arctic climate'Blame The People
Stream Pollution from Coal Mines near Route 160 in Letcher County, Kentucky Photo
iLoveMountains. Flickr set: Kentucky Coalfields TourOn the 7th October 2010, a coalition of environmental advocates took the first step towards bringing a lawsuit against three mining operations in Kentucky for over 20,000alleged violations of the Clean Water Act. Among the pollutants allegedly discharged at excessive levels include iron, total suspended solids, pH and manganese, ingestion of which can cause neurological problems resembling Parkinson’s disease. Some of the manganese exceedances are over 40 times the maximum allowable levels.
Kentucky Mining Companies Sued For Massive Water PollutionCelsias
A December, 2008 coal ash spill in Tennessee - America's largest environmental disaster - is providing new insights, and renewed investigation, into this unsightly and dangerous byproduct of coal-fired power plants.
Studies conducted over the last few decades have confirmed that coal ash, or fly ash, is more radioactive than nuclear waste. In fact, according to a recent article in Scientific American, fly ash contributes 100 times more radiation to the surrounding environment via its uranium and thorium content than does a nuclear power plant creating the same amount of energy.
Coal Fly Ash More Radioactive than Nuclear WasteCentral Pollution Control Board (India)
Air pollution in coal mines is mainly due to the fugitive emission of particulate matter and gases including methane, sulphur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen. The mining operations like drilling, blasting, movement of the heavy earth moving machinery on haul roads, collection, transportation and handling of coal, screening, sizing and segregation units are the major sources of such emissions. Under-ground mine fire is also a major source of air pollution in some of the coal fields.
Air pollutionClean Air Task Force (USA)
From mining to coal cleaning, from transportation to electricity generation to disposal, coal releases numerous toxic pollutants into our air, our waters and onto our lands.
The trace elements contained in coal (and others formed during combustion) are a large group of diverse pollutants with a number of health and environmental effects...which may vary over time and space, from short-term episodes of coal dust blown from a passing train to the long-term global dispersion of mercury, to climate change.
Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009
An Act of the Scottish Parliament to set a target for the year 2050, an interim target for the year 2020, and to provide for annual targets, for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions; to provide about the giving of advice to the Scottish Ministers relating to climate change; to confer power on Ministers to impose climate change duties on public bodies; to make further provision about mitigation of and adaptation to climate change; to make provision about energy efficiency, including provision enabling council tax discounts; to make provision about the reduction and recycling of waste; and for connected purposes.
Scottish Climate Change Law (pdf)The Dogwood Initiative (Canada)
The best scientific estimate is that all of humanity can contribute no more than the equivalent of 233 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide greenhouse gases to the Earth's atmosphere by 2100 if the average global temperature rise is to be kept under two degrees centigrade.
B.C., with 0.0065 percent of the world's population, will contribute six percent of that total, if all of the province's active and proposed coal mines exhaust their supplies.
The BC government has proclaimed it will reduce BC's greenhouse gas emissions by 33 per cent below 2007 levels by the end of the decade. This goal conceals a double secret: the government does not fully account for heat-trapping pollution from coal mined in BC; and coal mining is expanding in BC. To end the secrecy, this report describes coal mining in BC today, its effect on global warming, and the rules the BC government and its Western Climate Initiative partners use to exclude coal from their emissions calculations.
BC's dirty little secret: (pdf) Big Coal and the export of Global Warning PollutionDuke University
Potential Impacts of Leakage from Deep CO2 Geosequestration on Overlying Freshwater Aquifers
Abstract of StudyThe Murky Future of King Coal
Environmental Ethics at Rhodes
One of the main sources of energy in current society is via the use of coal. Coal is a fossil fuel similar to gas or oil that is harvested by mining as it is often found beneath the surface of the earth or high on a mountaintop. At first glance, it of course seems like an easy way to provide various sorts of energy and also to provide thousands of jobs in the mining industry. Upon further review, however, coal mining has some serious disadvantages as well. With all the recent more environmentally-minded action that is occurring worldwide, it is time to reconsider coal mining and whether or not it does more harm than good.
Coal MiningEzine articles
Greenpeace opens its Climate Rescue Station next to an open coal mine in the heart of Polish coal country. Poland depends on coal for 93% of its power. Globally one third of all CO2 pollution comes from coal. We cannot save the climate unless we quit coal.Photo © Steve Morgan/ Greenpeace, used under a Creative Commons License
It was feared in the early 1990s that the excessive use of coal would cause serious environmental damage. But the fear of economic disruption still outweighed the environmental ramifications, therefore the pollution issue was not brought to an abrupt halt. Tests later conducted in the Silesian mining region showed greater cases of respiratory and circulatory problems, higher lead content in children's blood, and more cases of cancer. Large amounts of agricultural land were deemed unfit for farming due to industrial waste. 65% of Poland's river water was found to be polluted enough to corrode industrial equipment according to one 1990 report.
The Effect Of Polish Coal Mining On the EnvironmentFriends of the Earth
Coal is the most polluting of all fossil fuels. Proposals for a new generation of coal-fired power stations across the UK are a cause for great concern.
No More Carbon Dinosaurs campaignCoal campaign
e-action (On behalf of CONCH)
Greenpeace
Although the world has access to enough clean energy to meet our energy needs six times over, it also has an abundance of coal.
Globally coal is the greatest climate threat we face, contributing more to global warming than any other fossil fuel. Coal contains more carbon than other fossil fuels , so it releases more carbon than the other fuels when it’s burned.
Carbon capture and storage won’t save the climate
False Hope (pdf; 128Kb)Coalfinger (spoof movie and information)
How people and the planet are paying the price for the world's dirtiest fuel
The True Cost of Coal (pdf; 92 pages, detailled but very readable)The connection between coal-fired power stations and global warming
Climate change - coalThe case against coal
Frequently-asked questionsInteresting facts about coal-fired power plants: mercury, and other pollutants (pdf)
Environmental group Greenpeace warns that China is producing toxic coal ash at an alarming rate, destroying surrounding villages and agricultural land.
Photo credit: Zhao Gang/Greenpeace
The Herald/Sunday Herald
One of Britain’s top green gurus has attacked Scotland for its “addiction” to the oil and coal industries which he says threaten to tip the world into catastrophic climate chaos.
Jonathon Porritt, a former high-level government adviser and a star of the environment world, has condemned the Scottish Government for backing new oil and coal developments which will produce huge amounts of climate pollution.
Call for Scotland to ditch its ‘addiction’ to oil and coalGovernment-backed plans for a huge new coal-fired power plant are running into a rising tide of opposition from a powerful range of groups worried about pollution, wildlife and tourism.
‘Rainbow coalition’ prepares to fight against massive coal power station at HunterstonMines and Communities
MAC publishes Dark Materials - an in-depth piece of research that exposes the cold facts behind the coal figures.
The report concludes that :
• Projections of future coal demand are often at variance with each other. As yet there is little sign of an imminent rush to massive new production. But, while demand has flattened in some countries, reliance on coal is accelerating in others.
• The Asia-Pacific region provides the critical market for exported coal. Despite their own significant coal reserves, India and China are likely to become the biggest importers.
• Indonesia is the world's largest exporter of steam coal. Predominantly located in tropical forests, Indonesian mines are among the most damaging and least regulated anywhere.
• Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is severely flawed as a technology to reduce global greenhouse emissions created by burning coal. Even if this were not the case, the good health of our planet and its inhabitants requires a drastic reduction in coal use over the next ten years.
• The employment and food security of millions of people are currently linked to coal mining and carbon-fuelled electricity. Nonetheless, the creation of more sustainable livelihoods is possible - so long as there is the will to do so.
Dark MaterialsSciencemag
Damage to ecosystems and threats to human health and the lack of effective mitigation require new approaches to mining regulation
Mountaintop Mining ConsequencesSierra Club
Coal-fired power is one of the most polluting forms of energy available, particularly when compared to renewable energy alternatives such as wind, solar and geothermal power
Understanding the Health Costs of a Dirty Energy Source (pdf)SourceWatch
There are numerous damaging environmental impacts of coal that occur through its mining, preparation, combustion, waste storage, and transport.
Environmental impacts of coalUSA Today
Coal factory in coal mining territory, between Xining and Lanzhou, Qinghai China It takes five to 10 days for the pollution from China's coal-fired plants to make its way to the United States, like a slow-moving storm. It shows up as mercury in the bass and trout caught in Oregon's Willamette River. It increases cloud cover and raisesozone levels, and along the way, it contributes to acid rain in Japan and South Korea and health problems everywhere from Taiyuan to the United States.
This is the dark side of the world's growing use of coal.
Wikipedia
There are a number of adverse environmental effects of coal mining and burning.
- Release of carbon dioxide and methane, both of which are greenhouse gases causing climate change and global warming. Coal is the largest contributor to the human-made increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
- Waste products including uranium, thorium, and other radioactive and heavy metal contaminants
- Acid rain
- Acid mine drainage (AMD)
- Interference with groundwater and water table levels
- Impact of water use on flows of rivers and consequential impact on other land-uses
- Dust nuisance
- Tunnels, sometimes damaging infrastructure
- Rendering land unfit for the other uses
