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Open-pit coal mining in the United Kingdom ended in November 2023. [1]
Each open-pit coal mine usually lasted four or five years at extraction rates of up to a quarter-million tons a year. [ citation needed ] Until 2014, statistics on open-pit coal mining were compiled by the British Geological Survey from information provided by local planning authorities. [2]
In September 2017, there were 9 sites operating in the UK with a total manpower of 590. [3] Production has declined to around 3 million tonnes in 2017.
The Ffos-y-fran Land Reclamation Scheme was (as of October, 2021) the only major open pit operating in the UK with a few small to very small other sites (employee count much less than 50 per mine for all sites other Ffos-y-fran) still in operation. Also, no major applications were pending to open new mines as of October, 2021.
The opencast at Ffos-y-fran ceased operation in November 2023, which ended opencast coal-mining in the UK. [4]
Miller Argent ran the Ffos-y-fran Land Reclamation Scheme in eastern Merthyr Tydfil, which involved mining the coal from under 367 hectares of land made derelict by earlier coal-mining operations; the coal will be provided to the Aberthaw Power Station on the Glamorgan coast. The project started in 2007 and finished in 2023. [5] Aberpergwm was also reopened in 2018. [6] Note, that according to this source, this mine is an underground drift mine, and not an open-pit mine.
Celtic Energy only operated the expanded East Pit, [7] until Nant Helen was reopened in 2019 to replace the soon to be closed East Pit. [8] The site's licence was revoked in June 2020; thus mining is to stop. [9]
Hargreaves plc operated one site in Scotland, House of Water in Ayrshire; [10] the site stopped operating in 2020. [11]
Banks Mining started working on its Bradley site in May 2018 amid protesters camping on the site. [12] [13] Banks had three additional operation sites in Shotton, and Brenkley Lane both in Northumberland, and Rusha in Scotland. [14] All of these sites are closed (or under restoration) as of August, 2020 but Banks were awaiting decisions on two proposed sites to open (Druridge Bay and Newcastle). [15] The application for Druridge Bay was rejected on 8 September 2020 for a second time, and Banks company decided not to appeal this time, making the decision final. [16] The application for opening a mine in Newcastle (Dewley Hill) was rejected on 18 December 2020. [17]
A mine in Hartington, Derbyshire was still operating in August, 2020 but was planning on closing by the end of 2020. [18] It closed in September, 2020. [19]
The following information relates to 2016 and earlier. Output has fallen every year since 2010. In 2010, the United Kingdom was forecast to produce about ten million tonnes (9,800,000 long tons; 11,000,000 short tons) of coal a year [20] from open-pit mines. Most came from Scotland, [21] with the largest operator there being the Scottish Coal subsidiary of Scottish Resources Group. [22] Actual production in 2010 was over 13 million tonnes but this has declined to less than 8 million tonnes in 2014.
In November 2015, the UK Government announced that all the remaining coal-fired power stations would be closed by 2025. [23] In February 2020 the UK government said that it would consult on bringing the closure date forward to 2024. [24] [25]
Year | England | Wales | Scotland | GB total |
---|---|---|---|---|
2014 | 2,884,935 | 2,488,321 | 2,497,014 | 7,870,270 |
2013 | 3,411,955 | 2,342,812 | 2,829,155 | 8,583,922 |
2012 | 2,956,331 | 2,408,313 | 4,823,357 | 10,188,001 |
2011 | 2,948,997 | 2,102,995 | 5,527,765 | 10,579,757 |
2010 | 2,599,941 | 4,423,295 | 6,038,479 | 13,061,715 |
Hargreaves plc announced in 2016 the closure of the following operations: [10] [26]
The deep mine at Tower Colliery closed in 2008, but there is a plan to build an 80-hectare 165-metre open-pit mine to extract a remaining 6Mton reserve of anthracite, for which a planning application was registered in July 2010. [27] The opencast operation stopped production in March 2017 after it was unable to sell the coal to Aberthaw Power Station due to stricter environmental controls. [28]
Energybuild Ltd operated an opencast site here; [29] it was estimated to have 450 kton of recoverable coal in 2006, which has mostly been excavated between 2006 and 2009. The overburden was sold as road stone.
The site was approved in 1995 but operation was delayed until 1997. Celtic Energy operated a mine at Selar in the Neath Valley. [30] Planning permission was granted to extend the extraction by 800,000 tonnes in 2013 which will keep the mine operational until 2020. [31] The site was mothballed in 2015 due to low coal prices. [7] Celtic Energy now only operates only the expanded East Pit.
Miller Argent planned to extract 6m tonnes of coal at Nant Llesg, near Rhymney. Their application was rejected by Caerphilly county borough council on 7 August 2015. [32] The company is considering an appeal. [33]
Banks Mining applied in October 2015 for planning permission to extract about three million tonnes of coal and other minerals from the Highthorn site in Northumberland. The application was rejected in March 2018. [34]
In 2010, UK Coal had the following prospective sites in England and Scotland. [39]
The Sunday Herald reported on 13 July 2014 that "Mines in Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and Fife, abandoned by Scottish Coal when it went bust in April 2013, are threatened by rising water levels, contaminated lagoons and erosion". [44]
On 9 July 2015 an Opencast Coal Summit was held to "explore what the planning system can do to ensure all opencast coal sites are fully and sustainably restored for the benefit of communities and the environment". After the summit a report was published by Carl Sargeant AM, the Welsh Minister for Natural Resources. [45]
Open-pit coal mining is opposed by the Loose Anti-Opencast Network (LAON) [46] and by Greenpeace [47] and Friends of the Earth. [48]
Pegswood is a historic mining village and civil parish in Northumberland, England, and the site of the former Pegswood Colliery. Pegswood is two miles (3 km) east of Morpeth and three miles (5 km) west of Ashington, with a population of around 3,280. Pegswood is on a small hill above the valley in which Morpeth is situated, close to the River Wansbeck and to the small stream Brocks Burn.
The South Wales Coalfield extends across Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Bridgend, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Merthyr Tydfil, Caerphilly, Blaenau Gwent and Torfaen. It is rich in coal deposits, especially in the South Wales Valleys.
Tower Colliery was the oldest continuously working deep-coal mine in the United Kingdom, and possibly the world, until its closure in 2008. It was the last mine of its kind to remain in the South Wales Valleys. It was located near the villages of Hirwaun and Rhigos, north of the town of Aberdare in the Cynon Valley of South Wales.
UK Coal Production Ltd, formerly UK Coal plc, was the largest coal mining business in the United Kingdom. The company was based in Harworth, in Nottinghamshire. The company was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. The successor company that contains the former property division, Harworth Group, is still listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Trimsaran is a community and former mining village which lies on the B4308 between Llanelli and Kidwelly, in the Welsh county of Carmarthenshire.
The Ffos-y-fran Land Reclamation Scheme was a major opencast coaling operation to the north-east of Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. It was the last major opencast mine in the UK, and it shut down in November 2023 with restoration planned to start in 2024.
The Maltby Main Colliery was a coal mine located 7 miles (11 km) east of Rotherham on the eastern edge of Maltby, South Yorkshire, England. The mine was closed in 2013.
Ashington is a town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, with a population of 27,864 at the 2011 Census. It was once a centre of the coal mining industry. The town is 15 miles (24 km) north of Newcastle upon Tyne, west of the A189 and bordered to the south by the River Wansbeck. Many inhabitants have a distinctive accent and dialect known as Pitmatic. This varies from the regional dialect known as Geordie.
Lynemouth Power Station is a biomass power plant which provides electricity for the UK National Grid. Until March 2012, it was the main source of electricity for the nearby Alcan Lynemouth Aluminium Smelter. It is located on the coast of Northumberland, north east of the town of Ashington in north east England. The station has stood as a landmark on the Northumberland coast since it opened in 1972, and had been privately owned by aluminium company Rio Tinto Alcan throughout its operation until December 2013, when RWE npower took over. In January 2016 it was acquired by the Czech company Energetický a průmyslový holding.
Hatfield Colliery, also known as Hatfield Main Colliery, was a colliery in the South Yorkshire Coalfield, mining the High Hazel coal seam. The colliery was around 1 mile (1.6 km) northwest of Hatfield, South Yorkshire, adjacent north of the railway line from Doncaster to Scunthorpe northeast of Hatfield and Stainforth railway station.
Coal mining in the United Kingdom dates back to Roman times and occurred in many different parts of the country. Britain's coalfields are associated with Northumberland and Durham, North and South Wales, Yorkshire, the Scottish Central Belt, Lancashire, Cumbria, the East and West Midlands and Kent. After 1972, coal mining quickly collapsed and had practically disappeared by the 21st century. The consumption of coal—mostly for electricity—fell from 157 million tonnes in 1970 to 587,000 tonnes in 2023 Employment in coal mines fell from a peak of 1,191,000 in 1920 to 695,000 in 1956, 247,000 in 1976, 44,000 in 1993, 2,000 in 2015, and to 360 in 2022.
Marley Hill is a former colliery village about six miles to the south west of Gateshead, near the border between Tyne and Wear and County Durham. It has been part of the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead since 1974. Prior to this it was part of Whickham Urban District. It lies within the Whickham South & Sunniside electoral ward of the Blaydon parliamentary constituency.
The Midgeholme Coalfield is a coalfield in Midgeholme, on the border of Cumbria with Northumberland in northern England. It is the largest of a series of small coalfields along the south side of the Tyne Valley and which are intermediate between the Northumberland and Durham Coalfields to the east and the Cumberland Coalfield to the west. Like the other small coalfields to its east, this small outlier of the Coal Measures at Midgeholme occurs on the Stublick-Ninety Fathom Fault System, a zone of faults defining the northern edge of the Alston Block otherwise known as the North Pennines. It is recorded that coal was being mined at Midgeholme in the early seventeenth century. In the 1830s coal trains were being hauled from Midgeholme Colliery along the Brampton Railway by Stephenson's Rocket. The early workings have left a legacy of spoil heaps, bell pits, shafts and adits. There is no current coal production. However in January 2014, Northumberland County Council gave planning permission for the open-cast extraction of 37,000 tonnes of coal at Halton Lea Gate. This may open the way for other applications to mine the coalfield. In 1990 a proposal to mine reserves of 60,000 tonnes of good-quality coal at Lambley, Northumberland was rejected, but the prospect for a successful application has now changed, since the Planning Inspector allowed the development to proceed at Halton Lea Gate on appeal.
Ellington Colliery, was a coal mine situated to the south of the village of Ellington in Northumberland, England. The colliery was the last deep coal mine in the north east of England. At one time, the deepest part of the mine was 800 metres (2,600 ft) and it extended 15 miles (24 km) under the North Sea. During the 1980s, the pit was known as the biggest undersea mine in the world and produced 69% of the mined coal in Northumberland.
Haig Colliery was a coal mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria, in north-west England. The mine was in operation for almost 70 years and produced high volatile strongly caking general purpose coal which was used in the local iron making industry, gas making and domestic fires. In later years, following closure of Workington Steelworks in 1980, it was used in electricity generation at Fiddler's Ferry. Situated on the coast, the underground workings of the mine spread westwards out under the Irish Sea and mining was undertaken at over 4 miles (6.4 km) out underneath the sea bed.
Shotton Surface Mine was an open cast coal mine located on the estate of Blagdon Hall, Northumberland, UK, operated by Banks Group. The mine was granted permission by the government in 2007, despite being refused permission by Blyth Valley Council, with an initial agreement to mine 3.4 million tonnes of coal, 2 million tonnes of shale and 750,000 tonnes of fireclay. This was subsequently extended by two years in 2011 to allow an additional 2 million tonnes of coal to be mined, set to end in 2016. An additional expansion approved in 2014 saw two new pits being opened on the site, Shotton Triangle and Shotton South West, with the end date pushed back a year to October 2017; the land was expected to be restored by 2019. The mine eventually ceased production in summer 2020.
Woodhouse Colliery, also known as Whitehaven coal mine, is a proposed coal mine near to Whitehaven in Cumbria, England. The coal mine has been advertised as bringing jobs to a deprived area, but has also come in for criticism by green campaigners. The mine is proposed by West Cumbria Mining and plans to extract coking coal from beneath the Irish Sea for 25 years. The plan has been criticised by some MPs, scientists and environmentalists due to the coal mine's environmental impact and the UK government's legal commitments to reduce UK carbon emissions.
Monckton Coke Works was a coking plant near Royston in South Yorkshire, England. The plant opened in 1884 and was closed 130 years later in 2014, being one of the last remnants of the coal industry in Yorkshire. In the 21st century, it was known as being the last independent coke works in the United Kingdom. For many years it was known for its high-quality coking coal, even being exported to coal-rich South Africa for use in steelmaking. However, in 2013/2014, the market was swamped with cheap imports from the Far East, spelling the demise of Monckton due to it being uneconomical.
Kuju Area is one of the operational areas of the Central Coalfields Limited located mainly in the Ramgarh district in the state of Jharkhand, India.