Tuesday 11 December 2012

King Coal Slips Sadly Away

Here's the last sad chapter in a mighty volume.  UK Coal is settling down in the bed nearest the door.  I know a bit about this, and the banks have been fairly constructive (although the article doesn't credit them at all).  So it's probably the best that can be done in circumstances where (a) our politicians are fixated on green-pandering energy policies and (b) the global coal trade is fairly buoyant.

My views on this have been stated often enough, summarised here 5 years ago:  new coal plants should replace old coal, as they do in Germany.  Whether UK Coal could play a long-term part in this (as opposed to imports), it's hard to say.  But the one consistent aspect of recent UK energy policy has been No New Coal Without Full CCS, i.e. no new coal whatever.

And, as the article says,“Coal is keeping the lights on at the moment”. What a history is coming to an end !

ND

8 comments:

Blue Eyes said...

Didn't Labour try to save what was left of the coal industry by banning new gas stations from being built? How did that work out?

Unless we're going to rig the market to force British coal to be burnt ahead of anything else, this is inevitable. We simply can't compete with the open-cast-mined stuff from elsewhere.

Maybe we should build a fortress economy in energy, maybe we shouldn't. But we aren't going to have British coal if we don't...

Nick Drew said...

no: Mandelson (when at the DTI) imposed a short gas moratorium (pure gesture politics) but resumed business as usual thereafter

Budgie said...

The fusion pilot, ITER, will be working before CCS.

And you know my stance: CAGW is a scam; Jonny Foreigner will not look after us; so I'm all for a lump of UK coal in the mix.

Sebastian Weetabix said...

Coal mining is nasty, hard, very dangerous work. Fracking is not... and both can cause very minor seismic disturbances. On balance we shouldn't be sorry to see coal go.

Lets keep the brass bands though. And let's get fracking.

Demetrius said...

I believe there may be large coal reserves in Oxfordshire, some in the vicinity of Chipping Norton. Might this be a reason for not investing in coal? Purely incidentally, fracking needs a great deal of water, where is that going to come from?

Nick Drew said...

Demetrius - unless salt-water is in some strange way disqualified, I don't see that being a problem in these small islands

alternatively, the quantities of gas being talked about would easily finance a very big pipeline from the Lake District to Lancs

Blue Eyes said...

Lancs, that well-known drought zone!

Anonymous said...

I have been wondering lately, more much money has been lost down the coal mines since the 1970's, such as mining hardware,such as rails, locomotives, copper wire, coal cutting equipment, signaling equipment, the list can go on, all left at the bottom of the pits and now slowly being crushed, the total amount could well amount to many hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of pounds. The coal industry was highly mechanised not as Arturo would have everyone believe, big sweaty men wield pick and shovel all day long.