Coal Production in UK on the Rise

The coal production in Britain has now seen a very heavy increase. This has come about after a huge surge in new opencast coal mines, which is undermining the government’s claims that it will become a world leader on combating climate change.

Right now, dozens of opencast coal mines have been authorized by local councils and ministers all across the UK. This is reversing a decade long decline in coal production in Britain. This new move has, of course, been met with intense local opposition.

Due to the increase in mining, companies are now sitting on over 70 million tonnes of coal in licensed opencast mines. This is compared to just 55 million tonnes of coal that was seen in 2007. On top of this, it is looking like the industry may win permission to mine another 15 million tonnes of coal from all across the UK.

NASA climate scientist, Professor James Hansen, says that this increase in coal production is undermining the UK’s position on climate change as a whole. He went on to say, “The UK will be a joke. It is moral turpitude, depravity, to build more coal-fired power plants or open coal mines, knowing what we know now. It was one thing to dig coal when we didn’t know the consequences, but quite another thing today.”

New figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, which actually led to the UK’s efforts to persuade world leaders to agree to cut CO2 emissions, has indicated that the UK coal production has grown a lot during this year.

Thanks to www.guardian.co.uk for the above quote.