As someone who spent forty years around coal and it's By-Products I can safely state that there is no clean burning coal in the UK. UK coal is a bastard to get at, and thus expensive, then once you've got it you find that it's full of 'nastys' - Sulphur Dioxide and NOx being two of the worst and most toxic produced when it's being burnt. British Steel as it was when I first worked there didn't buy Aussie coal for the fun of it, you scratch the surface and its there, it's cleaner and 'relatively speaking' easier on the environment; also despite paying for it, bringing it half-way around the world it's still considerably cheaper than buying it from the Yorks/Notts coal fields barely thirty miles away.
I also have connections in the coal business although a long time ago, there's a big difference between anthracite and lignite.
I don't get where you're coming from BT? The bulk of UK mined coal has always been the anthracites; lignite is very inefficient for heat producing and far dirtier - mining it wasn't cost effective, too dirty for homes and has a far too poor calorific value for use in industry.
to be fair, steel needs metalurgical coal for its coking properties and most UK coal is steam coal which is used for power generation in power stations = most met coal comes from America, Canada and Australia - I mainly bought/traded steam but I I did a bit of US met into Rotterdam and into Turkey
That's correct Charon - where I worked we had really smart guys blending UK coals to make a good metallurgical blend, I believe the key additive for the metallurgical hardness was the stuff from S. Wales, it was always said you couldn't make Blast Coke without Welsh Coal. Apologies all - I can bore for England on this ****
I work at Drax and our CEO has just confirmed that our coal units will cease operation in September as planned in spite of what's happening in Ukraine. In fact he stated the UK government have not asked us to extend the operation of our coal units
