Energy customers prop up 'coaligarchs' by £1bn a year.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/utilities/article4163658.ece
Coal imported from both Colombia and Russia travels thousands of kilometres by land and sea routes, with a carbon footprint from overseas coal mines to UK power stations that is 294 times higher than that of the indigenous supply.
Recent estimates provided by Coalpro suggest that CO2 emissions would be many times higher to deliver coal from Russia to Drax Power Station compared with using the local supply from Hatfield Colliery. Of course, the greatest element of coals' carbon footprint is in its combustion, but the avoidable transport footprint of coal is massively greater than for UK supplies.
Extension of these figures to compare over 40 million tonnes of coal imported from both Colombia and Russia in the past year with the equivalent produced from the remaining deep mines in the UK, indicates that imported coal transport emissions at 7.3 million tonnes of CO2 is 294 times higher than that of the indigenous supply.
Steam coal - suitable for use in steam production to generate electricity - represented about 89% of total coal imports in 2012. Over 96% of UK steam coal imports came from just three countries in 2012 - Russia, Colombia and the USA.
04 Aug 2014, by Philip Pearson in Environment
