The Environmental Impact Of Future Coal Production And Use In The Eec

As coal is considered as a substitute for other fuels, more serious attention is being given to the environmental impacts of the whole coal fuel cycle: mining, transport, storage, combustion and conversion. This volume presents an up-to-date account of these environmental impacts and the recent developments to combat and control them. A feature of the book is the way in which it discusses not only the experience and developments in North America and Western Europe but also presents much information made available for this study on the developments in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe.

Environmental Impact of Energy Strategies within the EEC is a report prepared for the Environment and Consumer Protection Service of the Commission of the European Communities. The report aims to examine the effects on the environment of the production and use of different forms of energy within the community and to determine the scope for minimizing environmental impact through the adoption of appropriate energy strategies. After an introduction, this report presents in Sections 2 and 3 the summary, conclusions, and recommendations presented at the time of the Nuclear Hearings. The main body of the report is further divided into two parts. Part A contains the assessment of future community energy needs and the forecasts of primary energy supply according to various alternative energy strategies. Part B focuses on the potential environmental consequences resulting from the production and consumption of different sources of energy.

Coal will continue to provide a major portion of energy requirements in the United States for at least the next several decades. It is imperative that accurate information describing the amount, location, and quality of the coal resources and reserves be available to fulfill energy needs. It is also important that the United States extract its coal resources efficiently, safely, and in an environmentally responsible manner. A renewed focus on federal support for coal-related research, coordinated across agencies and with the active participation of the states and industrial sector, is a critical element for each of these requirements. Coal focuses on the research and development needs and priorities in the areas of coal resource and reserve assessments, coal mining and processing, transportation of coal and coal products, and coal utilization.

The study provides an analysis of the coalmine methane (CMM) status and prospects (up to 2030) in the EU from the sustainability point of view, i.e. economic, environmental and social implications. The study demonstrates the considerable potential for alternative price and regulatory drivers to encourage coal mine methane project developments. This is clear across the three scenarios considered (i.e., the existing market price scenario, the augmented price scenario, and a scenario that imposes a requirement for methane use/abatement to the extent that is technically feasible) as applied in this analysis to the three subject countries of Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom. The most significant potential impact that CMM industrial development brings is the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, which occurs under all three scenarios. The costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through policies to promote coal mine methane projects is also very favourable. The use of CMM will also provide some enhanced domestic supply of an energy resource. Although CMM should not be viewed as a critical strategic energy resource to the EU as a whole, as its maximum expected input into the European grid systems of gas and electricity would be small compared to the overall respective market sizes and would have very small impacts on energy prices, the analysis in this study shows that full use of existing and future CMM resources can contribute considerably to the energy mix of the local regions.