coal | ukwatch.net

Protest halts Drax coal train as summer of discontent against coal continues

Tim Holmes — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:41:05 +0000

From our friends over at The Coal Hole:

Media – Interviews are available with protestors: call 07944 367755

Photos from the protest at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sitefeed/

Protestors who halted a coal train carrying fuel for Drax power station in Yorkshire, the single biggest source of CO2 in the UK, are settling in to make sure supplies of coal to the power station remain cut off. The protest comes six weeks before the 2008 Camp for Climate Action at Kingsnorth power station – which will also highlight how using coal to supply energy will be a disaster for the planet.

Dressed in white overalls and canary outfits, they used safety signals to stop the train on a bridge overlooking the power station, before climbing on board and dumping coal off onto the tracks.

The train has been stopped on a branch line used exclusively for delivering coal to Drax. Protestors have used a network of climbing ropes to suspend themselves under the bridge from the train – meaning any movement while the protest continues is impossible.

Drax power station is the largest emitter in the UK – producing up to 36,000 tonnes of CO2 a day. That also makes it the third largest polluter in Europe – we are talking global scale climate disaster on this one folks.

Every year Drax burns between 7 and 11 million tonnes of coal – that’s about 23 million tonnes of CO2 released into the atmosphere a year… that’s more CO2 than the 103 countries in the world which emit less. Let’s just run that one past again – Drax emits more CO2 each year than 103 countries put together. Phew.

We Are Serious

“…it demonstrates that the Climate Camp bunch have got nerve and daring, and that their planning is absolutely meticulous. Secondly, it says very loudly We Are Serious.”

From The Guardian

The UK Government is considering giving the go-ahead to a new generation of coal-fired power plants, the first of which would be at Kingsnorth in Kent – an act which would directly contradict all of their fine words on cutting emissions, bringing in climate bills, and being a world leader on the climate issue. Meanwhile, the ice caps are melting, we’re at 387 ppmv carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (that’s very high – higher than we can sustainably stay at) and rising, and people are dying – now.

There is a problem, and there is a solution. Serious commitments to renewables, energy efficiency and a bit of global leadership from our Government could go a long way.

Yes, you’re quite right. As a movement, we are serious. Although we conduct ourselves cheerfully, we don’t think this is a game. Although we can joke, we know why we act. Although we feel anxious and nervous about the consequences, we do it anyway, because it’s important. We are serious – serious about the problem, and serious about solving it.

The protestors have told The Guardian they are intending to stay “until Gordon Brown decides to reverse his policy to expand coal-fired production in Britain.” For more information on the protest as it continues, check out The Coal Hole’s blog.

Blow for British Coal Company’s Controversial Mining Plans

Ellie Keen — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:45:40 +0000

Press Release

The UK company, Global Coal Management (GCM) has suffered a severe blow following the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) decision to drop its financial backing for the controversial proposal to build an open cast coal mine in Phulbari, North West Bangladesh.

Tim Jones, policy officer at the World Development Movement, which spearheaded the UK campaign to stop the Phulbari mine project going ahead said:

“It is absolutely right that the ADB have pulled out of this project. The consequences of the scheme on the environment and the people living in the area would have been disastrous. The people of Bangladesh should not suffer at the hands of a British company. This is a blow for GCM but a victory for some of the poorest people of Bangladesh.”

The ADB was planning to grant a US$100 million loan to the project, as well as a US$200 million political risk guarantee. But the Bank came under fire from a range of NGOs, activists and individuals who claimed that the mine would lead to political unrest, reduced access to food and water for more than 100,000 people and the displacement of at least 50,000 people with minimal compensation.

Professor Anu Mohammed from Bangladesh said:

“The area around Phulbari is extremely fertile and densely populated. It is also one of the few regions in Bangladesh that are safe from flooding and other natural catastrophes and therefore plays a key role for the food security of the entire country. The proposed ‘development’ project is merely a scheme to loot natural resources from a poor country for the rich. We will not allow Global Coal Management to turn a land of food for the people into a black hole for corporate profit.”

Forty-two community leaders from Phulbari wrote to the Asian Development Bank in December 2007 asking them to pull out of the mining project, saying: “The ADB offers loans in the name of reducing poverty, but if realised, we believe that this project will increase the poverty of the local population as well as cause environmental disaster.”

Over 60 international NGOs, such as Oxfam Australia, ActionAid Pakistan, Greenpeace India, also wrote to the Asian Development Bank setting out the social, environmental and political risks of going forward with the loan.

Notes to editors

More than 50,000 people, including the local indigenous community, will be displaced in a country increasingly short of land. GCM claim they will compensate the legal holders of the land, but the majority of people living in the region are landless farmers, who will receive minimal compensation and for only two years. GCM have not said how they expect people to earn a living once the land they work on has gone. Bangladesh is one of the most populated countries in the world.

Campaigners fear that food and water security will be compromised by the mine, due to an increase in the levels of toxins, including arsenic, in the water supply, which could also affect agricultural land. The mine will also reduce access to water in the area which is likely to affect a further 100,000 people.

Three people were killed during protests in August 2006, when over 20,000 people demonstrated against the mine. Campaigners are concerned that if GCM does not pull out of Bangladesh there will be further unrest.

Financing the mine would have contradicted the ADB’s own energy policy, which states that coal mines should only be supported if the coal is for use in the local area, but most of the coal would have been exported from Bangladesh.

To find out more about the World Development Movement’s action for Phulbari, please see www.wdm.org.uk/bangaldeshmine

Protest exposes ‘black hole’ in climate change policy

The Staff — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:58:41 +0000

from The Coal Hole:

Tuesday, 1st April, 2008: At the finale of today’s occupation of Ffos-y-Fran opencast coal mine, Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, a group of protesters unfurled a 36 metre banner across the main building stating “Coal: the black hole in UK climate policy.” Thirty-six metres is the distance between the mine and local residents’ homes.

Protesters occupied the mine since 6am this morning, barricading the main entrance to the site, climbing on the roof of the coal washery and chaining themselves to machinery. The action halted work at the mine, one of the biggest in the country, before protesters left this afternoon.

Protester Esther Tew, who sat on top of an eight metre high Komatsu digger for most of the day, said: “We just want the Government to take its own climate policies seriously. By supporting opencast mining at Ffos-y-Fran and encouraging the building of new coal power stations, Gordon Brown is undermining any chance the UK has of making the 60% cuts in emissions the Government is currently committing to, let alone the 80% target the climate change committee is likely to recommend at the end of the year.”

The protest at the Ffos-y-Fran site highlights the hypocrisy of the UK Government, which claims to be taking climate change seriously while approving new coal mines and coal-fired power stations.

Coal has the biggest climate impact of any fuel – despite opposition from the world’s leading scientists, the Government is supporting an outdated and dangerous technology that has no future.

Local residents have opposed the scheme for many years, and invited protesters to Merthyr last December to support their campaign. In England and Scotland, the scheme would have been rejected due to legislation requiring a 500 metre buffer zone between opencast mines and residential areas.

As the team leave the mine for the pub after a hard day’s work, others around the world are picking up their banners and getting ready to expose the ‘fossil fools’ making a mockery of climate change policy. In the US there are at least 100 ‘Fossil Fools’ protests planned later today.

A short film of the action is also available from VisionOnTV.

Carbon capture is turning out to be just another great green scam

Ellie Keen — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:22:08 +0000

“Coal is so clean and fresh that the prime minister brushes his teeth with it, Downing Street said last night. Mr Brown said advances in coal technology meant it was now one of the cleanest substances on Earth, and an unrivalled remover of stains and scaling.” So says the satirical website the Daily Mash(1). The real claims are scarcely battier.

Ministers are about to decide whether to approve a new coal burning power station at Kingsnorth in Kent. This would be the first such plant built in Britain since the monster at Drax was finished in 1986. As well as coal, it will burn up the government’s targets, policies and promises on climate change.

John Hutton, the secretary of state in charge of energy, has started justifying the decision he says he hasn’t made. “For critics,” he argued last week, “there’s a belief that coal fired power stations undermine the UK’s leadership position on climate change. In fact the opposite is true.”(2) Quite so: if we don’t burn this stuff the Chinese might get their hands on it. Or could he be a true believer? Does he really think there’s such a thing as clean coal?

Clean coal’s definition changes according to whom the industry is lobbying. Sometimes it means more efficient power stations (which still produce almost twice as much carbon dioxide as gas plants). Sometimes it means removing sulphur dioxide from the smoke (which boosts the CO2). Sometimes it means carbon capture and storage: stripping the carbon out of the exhaust gases, piping it away and burying it in geological formations. None of these equate to clean coal, as you will see if you visit an opencast mine. But they create a marvellous amount of confusion in the public mind, which gives the government a chance to excuse the inexcusable.

In principle, carbon capture and storage (CCS) could reduce emissions from power stations by 80-90%. While the whole process has not yet been demonstrated, the individual steps are all deployed commercially today: it looks feasible. The government has launched a competition for companies to build the first demonstration plant, which should be burying CO2 by 2014.

Unfortunately, despite Hutton’s repeated assurances, this has nothing to do with Kingsnorth or the other new coal plants he wants to approve. If Kingsnorth goes ahead, it will be operating by 2012, two years before the CCS experiment has even begun. The government says that the demonstration project will take “at least 15 years” to assess(4). It will take many more years for the technology to be retrofitted to existing power stations, by which time it’s all over. On this schedule, carbon capture and storage, if it is deployed at all, will come too late to prevent runaway climate change.

Kingsnorth will produce around 4.5 million tonnes of CO2 every year(5); if all eight of the proposed coal plants are built, they will account for 46% of the emissions Britain can produce by 2050, assuming the government sticks to Brown’s new proposed target of an 80% cut(6). Aviation, using the government’s own figures, will account for another 184% (7)(these figures are explained on my website). Even if we stopped breathing, eating, driving and heating our homes, the new runways and coal burners the government envisages would more than double our national greenhouse gas quota.

The government seeks to bamboozle us by arguing that the new power stations will be “CCS ready”, meaning that one day, in theory, they could be retrofitted with the necessary equipment. But even this turns out to be untrue. In January, Greenpeace obtained an exchange of emails between EO.N – the company hoping the build the new plant (yes the same EO.N that broadcasts footage of fluttering sycamore keys, suggesting that its dirty old habits have gone with the wind) – and Gary Mohammed, the civil servant drawing up the planning conditions(8). Mohammed begins by sending an email of such snivelling obsequiousness that you can almost smell the fear on it. “Drafting the conditions for Kingsnorth. If possible I would like to cover CCS … I admit this suggested condition could be without justification and premature but no harm in trying to gauge your opinion.” (This “suggested condition” was actually government policy. Who’s running this country?) EO.N replied by claiming that the secretary of state “has no right to withhold approval for conventional plant” (in fact he has every right). All it would allow the government to specify was that the potential for CCS “will be investigated.” Mr Mohammed wrestled with his conscience for all of six minutes before replying. “Thanks. I won’t include. Hope to get the set of draft conditions out today or tomorrow.”

This exchange took place in mid-January, a few days before the European Commission published a proposed directive specifying that all new coal-fired power stations must be CCS ready(9). Mr Mohammed must have known that he was helping EO.N to win approval for the plant before the directive comes into force next year.

You might by now be beginning the derive the impression that carbon capture and storage is not the green panacea that ministers have suggested. But you haven’t heard the half of it. Even if it does become a viable means of disposing of carbon dioxide, new figures suggest that it’s likely to enhance rather than reduce our total emissions.

For the companies which will bid to bury the gas, one technique is more attractive than the others. This is to pump it into declining oil fields. The gas dissolves into the remaining oil, reducing its viscosity and pushing it into the production wells. It’s called enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The oil the companies sell offsets some of the costs of carbon storage.

A few weeks ago, the green thinker Jim Bliss roughly calculated the environmental costs of this technique. He used as his case study the scheme BP proposed (but abandoned last year) for pumping CO2 into the Miller Field off the coast of Scotland. It would have buried 1.3m tonnes of CO2 and extracted 40 million barrels of oil(10). Taking into account only the four major fuel products, Bliss worked out that the total carbon emissions would outweigh the savings by between seven and fifteen times(11).

So has the government ruled out enhanced oil recovery? Not a bit of it. Its memo about the demonstration project says that Mr Hutton’s department “will want to ensure that the treatment of EOR and non-EOR projects are dealt with on a level playing field basis.”(12) Another document suggests it favours this technique: enhanced oil recovery will lead to “increased energy security, domestic revenue and employment”(13). But, the government notes, this will have to happen before the North Sea’s oil infrastructure is dismantled. “Now is the perfect opportunity to realise the significant opportunities offered by CCS.”(14)

Like biofuels and micro wind turbines, carbon capture and storage turns out to be another great green scam. It will come too late to prevent runaway climate change, the government has no intention of enforcing it and even if it had the technique is likely to boost our carbon emissions. This is what John Hutton calls “meeting our international obligations”(15). Heaven knows what breaking them might look like.

References:

1. http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=...

2. John Hutton, 10th March 2008. The Future of Utilities. Speech to the Adam Smith Institute. http://www.berr.gov.uk/about/ministerial-team/page45211.html

3. The commonest technique for flue gas desulphurisation is the limestone gypsum process. As well as making the power station slightly less efficient, the chemical reaction produces CO2. The two key reactions are:

CaCO3 + SO2 = CaSO3 + CO2

and

CaSO3 + _O2 + 2H2O = CaSO42H2O

See: Dept of Trade and Industry, March 2003. Flue Gas Desulphurisation (Fgd)
Technologies For Coal-Fired Combustion Plant. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file20875.pdf

4. BERR, 19th November 2007. Competition for a Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage
Demonstration Project. Project Information Memorandum. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file42478.pdf

5. Greenpeace, 2007. Letter to Alistair Darling. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/pdfs/climate/kingsnorth_objection.pdf

6. Here’s how Greenpeace makes this calculation:
“In December 2007, Gordon Brown said he aspired to an 80% cut in emissions by 2050. That would give us a carbon budget of 117.8mt/CO2/per year. The new coal plants currently proposed – 10.6 GW of capacity – would emit more than 54 million tonnes of carbon dioxide which represents almost half of that quota. (10.6 GW x 7884 hours of generation per year, assuming 90% operational = 83.57 TWH/y. 83.57 TWH/y x 0.65 = 54 mt/CO2/y).”

7. This is 80% of the 1990 level, namely 161.5MtC (please note that this weight refers to elemental C, not CO2). That leaves 32.3MtC.

The Dept for Transport’s conservative figures suggest aviation emissions will rise to 15.7 MtC by 2050. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that net radiative forcing from aircraft emissions is 2.7 times that of the CO2 alone, which gives a nominal carbon equivalent of 42.4MtC. The government’s figures systematically underestimate the UK’s contribution, by assuming that British people are responsible for 50% of the seats on flights leaving or arriving in the UK. The true figure is 70%, which means the total equivalent figure is 59.35MtC.

8. You can read these emails here: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/pdfs/climate/FOI-1.pdf

9. Commission Of The European Communities, 23rd January 2008. Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the geological storage of carbon dioxide and amending Council Directives 85/337/EEC, 96/61/EC, Directives 2000/60/EC, 2001/80/EC, 2004/35/EC, 2006/12/EC and Regulation (EC) No 1013/2006. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2008:0018:FIN:...

10. BP, 30th June 2005. BP’s plan to generate electricity from hydrogen and capture carbon dioxide could set a new standard for cleaner energy. Press release. http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=97&contentId=7006978

11. Jim Bliss, 17th January 2008. Oil companies and Climate Change. http://numero57.net/?p=224
Jim Bliss was asked to do this by the environmental writer Merrick Godhaven.

12. BERR, 19th November 2007, ibid.

13. The North Sea Basin Task Force, June 2007. Storing CO2 under the North Sea Basin – a key solution for combating climate change, p9. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file40159.pdf

14. ibid, p9.

Kill King Coal

Tim Holmes — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:04:25 +0000

Everyone should be concerned that the UK’s energy department wants new coal plants. Gordon Brown must intervene urgently to halt these plans. He must ensure new coal plants are not built on his watch without their carbon captured from the outset.

Reserves are hotly debated, but we know that enough oil and gas remain to take global warming close to, if not into, the realm of dangerous climate effects. But coal contains enough carbon to produce a vastly different planet altogether – a more dangerous and desolate planet from the one on which civilisation developed. Our climate is near critical tipping points that could lead to loss of all summer sea ice in the Arctic – with detrimental effects on wildlife, the beginning of ice sheet disintegration in West Antarctica and Greenland and a progressive, unstoppable global sea level rise. The shifting of climatic zones will lead to the extermination of many animal and plant species, the reduction of freshwater supplies for hundreds of millions of people, and a more intense hydrologic cycle with stronger droughts and forest fires, but heavier rains and floods. Stronger storms will be driven by latent heat, including tropical storms, tornados and thunderstorms.

Coal caused fully half of the fossil fuel increase of carbon dioxide in the air today, and on the long run coal has the potential to be an even greater source of CO2. Due to its dominant role, agreement to phase out coal, except where the CO2 is captured, is 80% of the solution to the global warming crisis. Of course, it is a tall order. Yet it is doable – compare that task with the efforts and sacrifices that went into the second world war.

If the west makes a firm commitment to this course, we can begin discussing the problem with developing countries. Given the potential of technology assistance, the growing grasp of the likely effects of climate change, and leverage that global trade gives us, securing the cooperation of developing countries is entirely feasible.

Great Britain, the US and Germany have contributed most to fossil fuel CO2 in the air today, on a per-capita basis. This is not an attempt to cast blame. It merely recognises the early industrial development in these countries, and points to our responsibility to lead in finding a solution to global warming.

Energy departments, influenced by fossil fuel interests, take it as a God-given fact that we will extract all fossil fuels from the ground and burn them before we move on to other ways of producing usable energy. The public is capable of changing this course dictated by fossil fuel interests, but clear-sighted leadership is needed now if the actions are to be achieved.

Can we find a country that will place a moratorium on any new coal-fired power plants unless they capture and store the CO2? Unless this happens soon, there is little hope of avoiding the climate tipping points, with all that implies for life on this planet.

E.ON Should Be Turned Off

Tim Holmes — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 11:35:32 +0000

Just before Christmas one of the world’s leading climate scientists wrote to Gordon Brown. Jim Hansen, who heads up the NASA Goddard institute in New York, is best known both for his research in the field of climatology and for his congressional testimony on climate change that helped raise broad awareness of the global warming issue.

In the letter (pdf), he makes a plea to our prime minister. “Your leadership is needed”, Hansen states, “on a matter concerning coal-fired power plants in your country, a matter with ramifications for life on our planet, including all species. Prospects for today’s children, and especially the world’s poor, hinge upon our success in stabilizing climate.” Hansen goes on to remind Brown that coal has caused “fully half of the fossil fuel increase of carbon dioxide in the air today”.

Last night the Conservative controlled Medway council in Kent, which unlike the Queen was not cc’d in to Hansen’s letter, approved plans for Britain’s first coal-fired power station in over 30 years. The plant will emit more than eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide every single year – more than the 30 least polluting nations of the planet combined. Its developer, the power company E.ON, is the single largest polluter in Britain.

E.ON and the other power giants are trying to blur the edges of what should be a simple black and white argument by talking about “clean coal” technology. This myth needs to be addressed. Clean coal, carbon storage, sequestration – all these terms are jargon, mythologising an untested, expensive and potentially unviable future process. No clean coal plants are operational anywhere in the world today, all the technologies have serious question marks hanging over them, and even the chancellor admits the techniques “may never work”. Meanwhile, those eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide are pumped into the atmosphere each year, every year. And if E.ON get their way, there will be many more coal plants to follow.

But there is an alternative. John Hutton announced last month that Britain could generate around half of Britain’s electricity from offshore wind farms by 2020 – easily negating the need for new coal. With efficiency, renewables and a radical new decentralised energy system we could slash our emissions within just a few years. Instead it seems that this government, in thrall to an outdated civil service, is convinced that large centralised plants are the only grown-up way of keeping the lights on, regardless of the consequences for our climate.

Hansen’s letter continues. “You have the potential to influence the future of the planet. Prime Minister Brown, we cannot avert our eyes from he basic fossil fuel facts, or the consequences for life on our planet of ignoring these fossil fuel facts. If we continue to build coal-fired power plants without carbon capture, we will lock in future climate disasters associated with passing climate tipping points.” Coming from a top scientist, this kind of stark language is remarkable. Let’s listen to the scientists, not the industry spinners. Kingsnorth may be the most important climate change decision that Gordon Brown will have to make, but it should not be a difficult one.

Bear to hear the truth you've spoken

JamieSW — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:52:44 +0000

I am sitting on top of an excavator the size of a house, dressed as a polar bear. In a world that’s gone mad this is the only sane thing left to do. The excavator is one of two Komatsu 3000s supplying a chain of monster dump trucks removing spoil and coal from what will be the biggest open cast mine in Britain.

This is the Ffos-Y-Fran mine on the outskirts of Merthyr Tydfil. It is remarkable in two respects. The first is that the hole, 200 metres deep, will come within 36 metres of the nearest homes. As far I can discover this is unprecedented in Britain in recent times. It has been made possible only because of 10 years of delay in producing the planning guidance for coal-workings in Wales. Local people suspect that it has been deliberately delayed in order to allow schemes like this to be approved. The second respect is that while our government negotiates with others in Bali about stopping runaway climate change, the developers here intend to extract 11m tonnes of coal. When that coal is burnt it will produce 30m tonnes of carbon dioxide. According to the latest science as explained in my last column that equates to the sustainable emissions of nearly 60 million people for one year.

We came here at the invitation of the people of Merthyr Tydfil, who have been fighting this scheme for years without success. The town already has some of the worst health statistics in the United Kingdom and people hear fear that the dust and smoke and noise from the mining will exacerbate some of the chronic diseases from which they suffer. They have been ignored by almost everyone and feel betrayed by a Labour party that appears to put the demands of big business above the human rights of one of the poorest communities in Britain.

The weather is filthy. We have been blasted by rain and gale force winds for most of the day. We feel that this is the least we can do to try to stop a project which threatens to undermine everything the government claims to be doing to prevent climate change. We will be coming down from the excavators in a couple of hours, filthy, bedraggled but very glad in view of the extreme weather that we have spent the day in polar bear costumes. For the first time in my life I’ve understood the benefits of fur (fake, of course).

The New Coal Age

Tim Holmes — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:24:21 +0000

As I watched the machine scraping away the first buckets of soil, one thought kept clanging through my head. “If this is allowed to happen, we might as well give up now”. It didn’t look like much: just a yellow digger and a couple of trucks taking the earth away. But in a secure compound behind me were the heaviest beasts I have ever seen – 1300 horsepower or more – lined up and ready to start digging the one of the largest opencast coalmines in Europe. In Romania perhaps? The Czech republic? On a hilltop in south Wales. The diggers at Ffos-y-fran, on the outskirts of Merthyr Tydfil, will excavate 1000 acres of land to a depth of 600 feet. There has never been a hole quite like it here, and our government’s climate change policies are about to fall into it.

Everything about this scheme is odd. The edge of the site is just 36 metres from the nearest homes, yet there will be no compensation for the owners, and their concerns have been dismissed by the authorities. Though local people have fought the plan, their council, the Welsh government and the Westminster government have collaborated with the developers to force it through, using questionable methods. I have found evidence which suggests to me that a member of Tony Blair’s government used false information to seek to persuade the Welsh administration to approve the pit. But perhaps the most remarkable fact is this: that outside Merthyr Tydfil hardly anyone knows it is happening.

It looks as if we are about to re-enter the coal age. Though the electricity companies spend millions telling us about their investments in renewable energy, at least four of them – E.On, RWE npower, ScottishPower and Scottish and Southern – are developing plans for new coal-burning generators, which produce roughly twice the carbon emissions of gas burners. According to one government document, there are “£20 billion of new coal-fired power stations planned to be built in the UK before 2020″(1).

The power companies are confident that the government will back them. Its Energy White Paper, published in May, begins by explaining the need to develop a low carbon economy. But buried on page 112 is a commitment to “secure the long-term future of coal-fired power generation”(2).

This is justified by the prospect that one day carbon emissions might be captured and buried in geological formations: a process known as carbon capture and storage, or CCS. But while the government has asked companies to build a demonstration plant by 2014, there are no firm plans for any commercial venture. The energy white paper admits that “CCS would not be commercially viable unless costs fell substantially … or unless the carbon price rose sufficiently to provide a larger financial incentive.”(3) In a parliamentary debate in May, Alastair Darling, then in charge of energy, acknowledged that the technologies required for CCS “might never become available”(4). We could be stuck with a new generation of coal-burning power stations, approved on the basis of a promise which never materialises, which commit us to massive emissions for 40 years.

There is another policy buried in the white paper which is already being implemented. This is to “maximise economic recovery … from remaining coal reserves.”(5) In 2006, British planning authorities considered twelve applications for new opencast coal mines. They rejected two of them and approved ten(6). They have done so, the story of Ffos-y-fran shows, with the active support of the government.

At first the people of Merthyr Tydfil could not understand why their representatives were siding with the developers. Merthyr has a long Labour tradition of social solidarity. While many people lament the passing of the deep mines, open-casting is unpopular. Petitions circulated by the local protest group raised 10,000 signatures. But the council, which is dominated by the Labour party, the Labour assembly member and the Welsh assembly have all helped the mining company to fight the objectors.

There are 432 local authorities in the United Kingdom. Life expectancy in Merthyr comes 429th(7). As a result of the legacy of heavy industry, smoking and bad diet, it has Wales’s highest rates of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, strokes and certain heart conditions(8). All these diseases are exacerbated by air pollution and stress. The pit will be dug into a steep hillside overhanging the town.

To reach the 10.8 million tonnes of coal they are hoping to extract, the developers must remove 123 million cubic metres of rock(9). The digging and infilling will last for 17 years, with explosives used to loosen the rock and machines working from 7 in the morning until 11 at night, generating smoke and dust(10). While the World Health Organisation identifies 55 decibels as causing “serious annoyance”(11), the planning conditions set maximum noise levels at 70dB(12). When local people say that the scheme will ruin their lives, I do not believe they are exaggerating.

But they are not the only ones who will be affected. A tonne of coal contains 746 kg of carbon(13): burning it produces 2.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide(14). This means that the coal in Ffos-y-fran will be responsible for almost 30 million tonnes of CO2: equivalent to the sustainable annual emissions of 25 million people(15). The only certain means of preventing climate change is to leave fossil fuels in the ground: when they are dug up, they will be used. This point has been ignored by the government. It has concentrated all its efforts on reducing the demand for fossil fuels, but has done nothing to reduce supply. It still subsidises exploration for oil and gas and it has been pouring state money into the coal industry.

Miller Argent, the consortium digging the pit, calls Ffos-y-fran a “land reclamation scheme”. It will “reclaim c.1,000 acres of acutely derelict, unsafe, unproductive and unsightly land”(16). By digging out the coal, the company says, it can restore the land without the need for public money. The scheme will also provide “direct employment for over 200 people” and “generate tens of millions of pounds for the local economy and to the benefit of the local community.”(17)

There is no doubt that some of the land in the scheme, comprising old workings and spoil heaps, is unsafe. But local people claim that only a small part of the site is acutely derelict. As I saw for myself, much of it consists of moorland and rough pasture, on which sheep graze and the people of Merthyr walk and picnic. “Reclamation would be sensible on some of the worst features,” one of the objectors, Leon Stanfield, told me. “But you don’t go down 600ft and blast 5 days a week to reclaim an area.” Today, he says, most opencast coal mines are promoted as reclamation schemes in order to try to win public approval. He calculates that reclamation without coal mining at Ffos-y-fran would take just three years. Because Merthyr Tydfil qualifies for European Objective One funding(18), the clean-up could be sponsored by the European Union.

The protesters maintain that few of the promised benefits will come to the town. The workers who operate the vast machinery used in opencasting are specialists who tend to move from mine to mine. The pit, local people believe, will blight the area, discouraging businesses from moving there and driving away tourists. One of the campaigners, Terry Evans, took me onto the hill and pointed down to his bungalow – on the other side of the road, 36 metres away.

As far as I can discover, no other opencasting scheme in recent times comes this close to people’s homes. In Scotland, planning rules require a buffer zone of at least 500m(19). But the people of Merthyr, through an extraordinary omission, have been left without the usual protections: after 12 years of delays, there is still no planning guidance for coal workings in Wales.

In 1997, the Welsh Office planned to publish a technical advice note, laying down the conditions new mines would have to meet. Nothing happened until the Welsh Assembly government was formed. It promised to publish the guidance in 2005(20), but the note is still only at the draft stage. The delay has been convenient to the developers: had the note been published, obtaining planning permission for schemes like Ffos-y-fran would have been more difficult.

The draft proposes a separation zone of 350 metres between opencast workings and the nearest homes(21). It also insists that a health impact assessment is published. Researchers at Cardiff University twice offered to conduct an assessment of the Ffos-y-fran scheme, but the council turned them down on the grounds that “there was no statutory requirement”(22). “We have been denied the protections the technical advice note would have given us,” Leon Stanfield told me. “No decision should have been made until it was published.” He suspects the note has been deliberately delayed in order to push through Ffos-y-fran and other schemes. When I approached the Welsh government, its spokesperson denied this. She maintained that the assembly is awaiting the results of “further research to look at the close geographical relationship between coal resources in Wales and Welsh communities.”(23)

This was not the only issue the objectors found odd. The borough council offered an extraordinary deal to Miller Argent. It would allow the company to recoup the costs of making its case at the public inquiry – £800,000 – out of the royalties that it would pay the council for the coal(24). The people of Merthyr, in effect, paid the developers’ barristers to argue against them. There was no such support for the objectors: they had to fund their case at the inquiry out of their own pockets. They lost. After a temporary victory for the protesters in the High Court, the digging began a few weeks ago.

Local people began to suspect that the mining company, Miller Argent, had friends in high places, so they made a freedom of information request. The results astonished them. First they received a letter sent in January 2004 by Stephen Timms, then minister for energy in the Westminster government, to the first minister of Wales, Rhodri Morgan(25). “My officials,” Timms revealed, “have had regular contact with Miller Argent”. He wanted the company’s application “resolved with the minimum of further delay”. Among the advantages he listed was that the mine would help to keep the Aberthaw power station in Barry in business: if it knew it had secure supplies from Ffos-y-fran, the power firm would fit sulphur scrubbers to comply with European rules, which would allow the plant to stay open for longer. This, in turn, would “assure the future” of the Welsh opencasting industry.

The letter is extraordinary in three respects. First that a minister in a department responsible for cutting carbon emissions (the department for trade and industry) should be supporting an opencast coal-mining scheme on behalf of its developer. Second that he should be seeking to extend the life of one of the most inefficient coal-burning plants in the UK (Aberthaw has been operating since 1971). Third that Aberthaw uses coal from many sources (50% of it is imported) and it is hard to see why its survival should be dependent on Ffos-y-fran.

But this was not the end of the lobbying. In December 2004, Timms’s successor, Mike O’Brien, sent Rhodri Morgan a second letter(26). He repeated the pleas Timms made on behalf of Miller Argent. He also used a new argument. Without the Ffos-y-fran scheme, Aberthaw might not be able to stay open, because its ability to bring in coal from abroad is “constrained by port and railway capacity limits”.

A few days after I read that letter, I found a document published by Mike O’Brien’s department earlier in the same year. It contained the following statement. “Problems were experienced in the year 2000 when demand for imported coal increased substantially. … This has been largely overcome by investment in new rolling stock and some upgrading of rail links. … Both EWS and Freightliner Heavy Haul have invested heavily in new rolling stock and there appears to be sufficient capacity to move the tonnages of coal projected.”(27) As for port constraints which might prevent imports of coal, the document reveals that “there is a surplus of capacity on the West coast” – which includes Wales(28). It seems to me that O’Brien has used false information to seek to persuade Rhodri Morgan to approve the scheme. When I challenged him, a government spokesman was deputed to tell me that “the letter referred to information that we had at the time. There is no question of Mike O’Brien misleading the minister.”(29)

This is not the only support the government has given to coal mining. Between 2000 and 2002 it gave Britain’s coal producers £162 million in subsidies, much of which went into big opencast mines(30). In 2003 and 2004 it gave the industry a further £58.5m(31).

In late 2006, Blair’s government established a body called the Coal Forum, composed of coal producers, electricity companies and government ministers and officials, whose purpose was to lobby for the future of coal(32). The opencast companies used the forum to rail against the planning laws which allow local people to hold up their schemes and to demand a faster approval process(33). They asked for a government statement explaining the benefits of a diversity of energy sources, in order to prevent climate policies from favouring gas(34). They hoped that this would appear in the energy white paper(35,36). They have received everything they wanted. We know that the Labour Party has a long-standing relationship with coal miners and their unions. But while New Labour has maintained its support for the industry, its allegiance appears to have switched from the workers to the bosses.

To see what will come to Merthyr Tydfil, I visited the Selar opencast scheme in the Neath Valley. It is not quite as big as Ffos-y-fran, but it is hard to convey the size of the hole. From the edge of the pit the monster trucks on the other side were reduced to yellow specks. Despite this breadth, I could not see the bottom. The roads zigzagged down the grey slopes for hundreds of feet until they disappeared beneath the cliff on which I stood. Even from the top of Mynydd Pen-Y-Cae, 1500 feet above the edge of the hole, the mine dominated the view. I camped on the mountain and watched the lights moving up and down the pit long after dark. When you think of the fuss people make about a few wind turbines, the neglect of this issue seems incomprehensible.

I hope that this will change. I hope that a new mobilisation, supporting the people of Merthyr Tydfil and other blighted communities, will stop the government from dragging us back into the coal age.

George Monbiot’s book Heat: how to stop the planet burning is published with new material in paperback.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Department of Trade and Industry, 14th November 2006. First Meeting of the UK Coal Forum. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file37293.pdf

2. Department of Trade and Industry, May 2007. Meeting the Energy Challenge: a white paper on energy. Para 4.28.

3. ibid, para 5.4.10, page 172.
4. Alastair Darling, 23rd May 2007. Parliamentary answer. Column 1289. http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/c…

5. Department of Trade and Industry, May 2007, ibid. Para 4.07, page 107.

6. British Geological Survey, 2007. Coal: opencast coal mining statistics 2006, Tables 4 and 5.
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/minequar/coal/occ/home.html#TABLE1

7. Office for National Statistics, 2006. Life expectancy at birth (years) and rank order, by local authority in the United Kingdom, with 95% confidence limits, 1993-1995 and 2003-2005. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_population/LE_UK_2006.xls#’UK LA rank order – M’!A1

8. Ffos-y-fran Health Impact Assessment Steering Group, 29th June 2007. A report of a health impact assessment study of an opencast scheme at Ffos-y-fran, Merthyr Tydfil, page 15.

9. ibid, page 13.

10. Clive Nield, 8th November 2004. Report on the application by Miller Argent (South Wales) Limited: Land Situated at Ffos-Y-Fran, East Merthyr.
The Planning Inspectorate, Caerdydd. File ref: APP/U6925/X/04/514548. Para 110, page 21.

11. World Health Organisation, 1999. WHO Guidelines for Community Noise. Table 4.1.
http://www.ruidos.org/Noise/WHO_Noise_guidelines_4.html

12. National Assembly for Wales, 11th April 2005. Planning Conditions Attached to Planning Permission of 11th April 2005 in Respect of Planning Application Ref. 030225. Reference A-PP 152-07-014. Section 18.

13. http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html

14. CO2 is 3.667 times the molecular weight of C.

15. This refers to the quantity of carbon dioxide which can be absorbed by the biosphere. As my book Heat explains, this is approximately 1.2 tonnes per person per year.

16. Miller Argent, 2006. Response to Minerals Planning Policy Wales.
http://www.ffos-y-fran.co.uk/index.cfm?id=10&pid=9

17. Miller Argent, 27th November 2006. The Ffos-y-frân Land Reclamation Scheme. Press release.

18. http://www.merthyr.gov.uk/Home/Regeneration/External+Funding/Objective+1…

19. The Scottish Government, July 13, 2005. Scottish Planning Policy 16: Opencast Coal. Para 11, page 6. http://www.scottishexecutive.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/55971/0015595.pdf

20. Carwyn Jones AM, 8th October 2003. Parliamentary answer (OAQ28458). Archives of the National Assembly for Wales. http://www.assemblywales.org/N0000000000000000000000000013163.pdf

21. Welsh Assembly Government, January 2006. Minerals Technical Advice Note 2 (Wales). Consultation Draft. Para 35, page 9. http://www.countryside.wales.gov.uk/fe/fileupload_getfile.asp?filePathPr….

22. Alistair Neill, Chief Executive Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council, 26th July 2007. Letter to Leon Stanfield.

23. Email from Sally May, 12th September 2007.

24. The agreement was originally struck between Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council and the former owners of the site, Celtic Energy. This can be found in para 17.5 of a leaked document setting out terms for the mine.

25. Stephen Timms MP, Department of Trade and Industry, 20th January 2004. Letter to Rhodri Morgan AM.

26. Mike O’Brien MP, Department of Trade and Industry, 14th December 2004. Letter to Rhodri Morgan AM.

27. Department of Trade and Industry, March 2004. UK Coal Production Outlook: 2004-16. Final Report, para 2.4, page 3. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file14151.pdf

28. ibid, para 2.5, page 4.

29. Telephone conversation with Chris Turner, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, 12th September 2007.

30. UK Coal Operating Aid Scheme: Coal Subsidy Programme / 823100 Cops0010 – Expenditure Profile by Tranche. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file34209.xls

31. Department of Trade and Industry, 2006. Coal Industry in the UK. http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/sources/coal/industry/page13125.html

32. Department of Trade and Industry, 11th July 2006. UK Energy policy shapes up to new global energy landscape. Press release.

33. Department of Trade and Industry, 14th November 2006. First Meeting of the UK Coal Forum, paras 10-11, page 4. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file37293.pdf

34. Department of Trade and Industry, 23rd January 2007. Second Meeting of the UK Coal Forum, section 5, page 6. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file37592.pdf

35. Department of Trade and Industry, 14th November 2006, ibid. para 17, page 5.

36. Department of Trade and Industry, 23rd January 2007. Section 5, page 6.