Lignite, often referred to as brown coal, is a soft, brown, combustible sedimentary rock formed from naturally compressed peat. It has a carbon content around 25–35% and is considered the lowest rank of coal due to its relatively low heat content. When removed from the ground, it contains a very high amount of moisture, which partially explains its low carbon content. Lignite is mined all around the world and is used almost exclusively as a fuel for steam-electric power generation.
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine is called a "pit", and above-ground mining structures are referred to as a "pit head". In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine.
James Edward Hansen is an American adjunct professor directing the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is best known for his research in climatology, his 1988 Congressional testimony on climate change that helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change. In recent years, he has become a climate activist to mitigate the effects of global warming, on a few occasions leading to his arrest.
Mountaintop removal mining (MTR), also known as mountaintop mining (MTM), is a form of surface mining at the summit or summit ridge of a mountain. Coal seams are extracted from a mountain by removing the land, or overburden, above the seams. This process is considered to be safer compared to underground mining because the coal seams are accessed from above instead of underground. In the United States, this method of coal mining is conducted in the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States. Explosives are used to remove up to 400 vertical feet of mountain to expose underlying coal seams. Excess rock and soil is dumped into nearby valleys, in what are called "holler fills" or "valley fills".
Donald Leon Blankenship is an American businessman. He was chairman and CEO of the Massey Energy Company—the sixth-largest coal company in the United States—from 2000 until 2010 when an explosion at Massey's Upper Big Branch Mine resulted in the death of 29 workers. He served one year in prison for conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards.
Consol Energy Inc. is an American energy company with interests in coal headquartered in the suburb of Cecil Township, in the Southpointe complex, just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2017, Consol formed two separate entities: CNX Resources Corporation and CONSOL Energy Inc. While CNX Resources Corp. focuses on natural gas, spin-off Consol Mining Corporation, now Consol Energy Inc. focuses on coal. In 2010, Consol was the leading producer of high-BTU bituminous coal in the United States and the U.S.'s largest underground coal mining company. The company employs more than 1,600 people.
The Martin County coal slurry spill was a mining accident that occurred after midnight on October 11, 2000, when the bottom of a coal slurry impoundment owned by Massey Energy in Martin County, Kentucky, broke into an abandoned underground mine below. The slurry came out of the mine openings, sending an estimated 306 million US gallons of slurry down two tributaries of the Tug Fork River. By morning, Wolf Creek was oozing with the black waste; on Coldwater Fork, a 10-foot-wide (3.0 m) stream became a 100-yard (91 m) expanse of thick slurry.
Jeff Biggers is an American Book Award-winning historian, journalist, playwright, and monologist. He is the author and editor of ten books. His most recent nonfiction book, In Sardinia: An Unexpected Journey in Italy, is a cultural history and travelogue of the island. Biggers stresses of an approach of historical storytelling he calls "re-storification," the process of unearthing and forging new stories, rituals, and gatherings that recover the withered or denied strands of history and reshape its continuum between the past and present.
Arch Resources, previously known as Arch Coal, is an American coal mining and processing company. The company mines, processes, and markets bituminous and sub-bituminous coal with low sulfur content in the United States. Arch Resources is the second-largest supplier of coal in the United States, behind Peabody Energy. As of 2011 the company supplied 15% of the domestic market. Demand comes mainly from generators of electricity.
The health and environmental impact of the coal industry includes issues such as land use, waste management, water and air pollution, caused by the coal mining, processing and the use of its products. In addition to atmospheric pollution, coal burning produces hundreds of millions of tons of solid waste products annually, including fly ash, bottom ash, and flue-gas desulfurization sludge, that contain mercury, uranium, thorium, arsenic, and other heavy metals. Coal is the largest contributor to the human-made increase of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere.
Jeff Goodell is an American author of seven non-fiction books and a longtime contributing writer to Rolling Stone. Goodell's writings are known for a focus on energy and environmental issues. He is Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow.
Burning the Future: Coal in America is a 2008 documentary film produced and directed by David Novack. The film focuses on the impacts of mountaintop mining in the Appalachians, where mountain ridges are scraped away by heavy machinery to access coal seams below, a process that is cheaper and faster than traditional mining methods but is damaging to the environment. Some environmental problems discussed in the film include disfigured mountain ranges, extinct plant and animal species, toxic groundwater, and increased flooding. The film's run time is 89 minutes. In 2012, it was rereleased in a shorter, updated version, that was created for public broadcast on PBS. This new version of the film's run time is 56 minutes.
Miners' Lung: A History of Dust Disease in British Coal Mining by Arthur McIvor and Ronald Johnston is a 2007 book (ISBN 978-0-7546-3673-1) which is part of the Studies in Labour History series. The book argues that British coal mining is the "classic dangerous trade", and even those that escape the immediate dangers of the pit may be subject to years of pain, laboured breathing and eventual death. McIvor and Johnston relate the story of how the dust created by the picks, hammers, and pneumatic tools "crept deep into the lungs of the otherwise powerfully built, healthy workers, eventually incapacitating them, ruining their bodies and killing them".
Boys in the Pits: Child Labour in Coal Mines is a 2000 book by Robert McIntosh, published by McGill-Queen's University Press. The book is about child labour in Canada in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with special reference to the history of boys, aged 8 to 15, who worked in coal mines. These boys worked underground, leading horses along subterranean roads, manipulating ventilation doors, helping miners cut and lift tons of coal, and filling wagons with freshly mined coal.
Mountaintop Removal is a 2007 documentary film directed by Michael O'Connell. The film explores how mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia has affected local communities. Filmed over two years, Mountain Top Removal features community advocates, such as Ed Wiley, Larry Gibson, Julia Bonds, Maria Gunnoe, and Mountain Justice Summer volunteers, in their efforts to oppose the destruction of Southern Appalachia's natural landscape. The film includes commentary from Jeff Goodell, author of Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future, geologists Dr. William Schlesinger and Dr. Peter Taft, and also Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association.
Berwind Corporation, previously also known as Berwind-White Coal Mining Company, is a large privately held American corporation headquartered in Philadelphia, The company has historically been involved in the coal industry, but has diversified into property leasing and ownership of unrelated businesses.
South Africa has a large energy sector, being the third-largest economy in Africa. The country consumed 227 TWh of electricity in 2018. The vast majority of South Africa's electricity was produced from coal, with the fuel responsible for 88% of production in 2017. South Africa is the 7th largest coal producer in the world. As of July 2018, South Africa had a coal power generation capacity of 39 gigawatts (GW). South Africa is the world's 14th largest emitter of greenhouse gases. South Africa is planning to shift away from coal in the electricity sector and the country produces the most solar and wind energy by terawatt-hours in Africa. The country aims to decommission 34 GW of coal-fired power capacity by 2050. It also aims to build at least 20 GW of renewable power generation capacity by 2030. South Africa aims to generate 77,834 megawatts (MW) of electricity by 2030, with new capacity coming significantly from renewable sources to meet emission reduction targets. Through its goals stated in the Integrated Resource Plan, it announced the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme, which aims to increase renewable power generation through private sector investment.
Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism (ISBN 978-0-8032-3775-9), by Ozzie Zehner, was published in 2012 by the University of Nebraska Press. It discusses various approaches to "clean energy", and why they do not provide the desired benefits. The author writes: "We don’t have an energy crisis. We have a consumption crisis." Green Illusions argues that perceived solutions to climate change, such as solar cells, wind turbines, and electric cars, are better understood as illusions that people and groups use to convince themselves that they can be sustainable without reducing material consumption and overall human numbers over time, especially in wealthy countries.
Jeffrey Ralph "Jeff" Holmstead is an American energy lobbyist and lawyer. He is a partner with Houston-based Bracewell LLP and a former deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the George W. Bush administration. Bracewell LLP is formerly Bracewell & Giuliani, the international law firm of Rudy Giuliani.
