A New Carboniferous Age?

George Monbiot has considered a wide range of issues surrounding the development of an opencast coalmine at Ffos-y-fran near Merthyr Tydfil (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/09/energy). I dont really want to get into his comments about the seemingly strange dialogues between the developer (Miller Argent), the Merthyr Local Authority, the National Assembly and the Westminster Government on this development but it does seem extraordinary that the involved digging and blasting can take place only 36 metres from housing! The opencast mining will focus on a site of more than 400 hectares, will involve excavating to a depth of more than 200 metres (removing more than 120 million cubic metres of rock) and the whole process (mining plus infilling) is scheduled to take around 17 years. This is to obtain 10.8 million tonnes of coal. The developers describe the process as "a land reclamation scheme" to restore ".....derelict, unsafe, unproductive and unsightly land". There is no doubt that some of the involved land (largely the residue of deep mining activity in days gone by) is far from pristine and may be unstable but the open cast mining is a strange way of carrying out remedial work (that apparently could be funded by European Objective One money). There is a claim that the mine will generate 200 jobs but local protesters claim that these will be largely the operators of the digging equipment who tend to move from site to site. A claim was made in the piece that one of the postulated reasons for favouring the scheme is that it would extend the life of the Aberthaw coal burning powerplant (near Barry). This plant has been operating since 1971 (equivalent to my career in Swansea) and lacks sulphur scrubbing technology. Monbiot also raises doubts about whether so-called "carbon capture and storage" technologies will be developed and, if actually produced, will be applied to coal burning powerplants (old or new). In addition to the local disruptions, it seems very likely that such developments will add greatly to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This seems a strange thing to do when there is much public concern about global warming. It is, of course, possible that the new enthusiasm for British coal is linked to concerns about the reliability of imported gas supplies.