Maps of coal
And a "plan" to phase out coal ?
Coal is organic material that turned into rock. When burnt, it produces a immense quantity of carbon dioxide and heat (that we use for energy generation).
The following map shows where coal can be find in the world. Look at Australia’s or Russia’s reserves ! These countries have an interesting economic advantage with nowadays energy generation around the world : they can export this natural ressource to other countries.
Lignite is “younger” coal. It comes from more recent organic material than hard coal (around 60-50 million years ago against 200 million years ago).
And here is a map to visualize how the largest economies of Asia are dependent on coal for energy generation.
How to get rid of this very polluting, yet so economicaly important mineral ?
Here is UK’s plan. By “plan” I mean their territory map picturing what happens when the country is done with coal. Unfortunately, not really a roadmap to phase out coal in the country’s energy mix…
As you might have seen on the first map the UK has only some coal mines. The truth is that they have a lot of emptied mine that were left abondonned.
It turns out The Coal Authority have a very precise web platform where we can see UK’s coal mine reserve.
Here is a pretty unappealing screenshot of what you might see when playing with this map.
Here is a youtube video where a scientist discusses the potential of these abandoned mines for geothermy. It is very funny and highly educational.
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Sources :
The world map of coal deposites
The Website with the full UK coal mines map (The Coal Authority UK)