Environmental impacts of coal mining and coal utilization in the UK

Abstract

Coal has remained the main source of energy in the UK from 1700 to the end of 1970s, and it still plays an important rolein the power generation. The paper discusses the current coal consumption in the UK together with environmental impacts of coalmining, coal processing and coal utilisation for power generation. Since coal remains the single biggest contributor to greenhouse gasesworldwide, methods for minimising environmental impacts of coal combustion are described in this paper including systematicapplication of the principles of clean coal technologies financed by the private sector.

Keywords

• environmental impacts
• greenhouse gases
• coal processing
• utilisation
• power generation