Dirtiest Coal’s Rebirth in Europe Flattens Medieval Towns
Europe’s appetite for cheaper electricity is reviving mines that produce the dirtiest type of coal, threatening to boost pollution and raze villages that have survived since medieval times. Across the continent’s mining belt, from Germany to Poland and the Czech Republic, utilities such as Vattenfall AB, CEZ AS and PGE SA are expanding open-pit mines that produce lignite. The moist, brown form of the fossil fuel packs less energy and more carbon than more frequently burned hard coal.
The projects go against the grain of European Union rules limiting emissions and pushing cleaner energy. Alarmed at power prices about double U.S. levels, policy makers are allowing the expansion of coal mines that were scaled back in the past two decades, stirring a backlash in the targeted communities.
“It’s absurd,” said Petra Roesch, mayor of Proschim, a 700-year-old village southeast of Berlin that would be uprooted by Vattenfall’s mine expansion. “Germany wants to transition toward renewable energy, and we’re being deprived of our land.”
Lignite demand worldwide is forecast to rise as much as 5.4 percent by 2020, according to the International Energy Agency. At the same time, it estimates consumption must fall 10 percent over that period to achieve goals endorsed by EU and world leaders to hold global warming to 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century.
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-06/dirtiest-coal-s-rebirth-in-europe-flattens-medieval-towns.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Hard Coal in the US is Anthracite, it is a very clean burring coal, highest energy content of any coal, lowest CO2 production when it is burned.
"Soft Coal" in the US can be Bituminous or Lignite
Those terms in Europe are different Anthracite is unknown outside of Wales, and most of the coal in Europe Lignite, thus they call Bituminous coal "Hard Coal" while it is commonly called "Soft coal" in the US:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_coal
http://kids.britannica.com/comptons/art-143386
Germany contains no Anthracite, and very little Bituminous but Germany has more Lignite coal then the US:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#World_coal_reserves
France and Poland contains mostly Bituminous coal fields.
Last edited Tue Jan 7, 2014, 12:39 PM - Edit history (1)
And I should add, RWE, E.On, and EnBW, collectively known as "The Big Four", or „Die großen Vier“ have controlled 80% of the market in generation. Those companies have invested almost zero in the energy transition. Zero. And the grid operators were content to make the easy money.
They have obstructed every small step of the way. Maybe with that in mind it's easier to understand why the German people have made the decisions they have over the past 30 years. You can't work with those people; they have to be eliminated from the market.
BTW, in spite of what Bloomberg is saying anecdotally, others are reporting differently:
You've probably heard a lot of noise about a coal resurgence in Europe. Earlier this year my colleagues and I tried to sift the fact from the fiction to tell you what's really going on -- a long-term decrease in coal use in the EU. It turns out we were wrong. This isn't going to happen in the future -- it's happening now.
New data from Greenpeace show that while the coal industry has been busy hyping up a coal "renaissance," coal consumption in the EU peaked one and half years ago -- the last quarterly increase in coal consumption was posted in the second quarter of 2012. More importantly, in just the first half of 2013 consumption was down 8 percent compared to a year ago. So much for the renaissance.
Total electricity consumption and net power exports actually increased slightly, but total thermal generation still dropped due to a strong increase in wind, solar and hydropower generation. Closures of two large coal-fired power stations in the UK and biomass conversion of one contributed to the drop. Several utilities also cited increased emission permit costs as a reason for decreasing coal-fired generation -- the free permits from the second period of EU's emission trading ran out at the end of 2012.
All of which means the decline is happening for largely the reasons we outlined earlier this year: rapidly increasing renewable power generation, plant retirements because of new air pollution rules and carbon pricing. To that can be added increased CO2 payments because of full auctioning of emission permits, and national policies particularly in the UK and Spain. All in all, coal is facing a structural decline in the countries that form the heart of the industrial revolution.
http://theenergycollective.com/guayjguay/315206/european-coal-use-declines-8-percent-first-half-2013
Similar story:
Coal consumption in the EU decreased 8 % in comparison to 2012 levels
16/12/2013 |
http://www.energymarketprice.com/?act=NewsDetails&newsId=13518
