Keeping coal's flame alive in the North

Oct 2 2011 Sunday Sun

There are growing calls for the expansion of the coal mining industry both to deal with Britain’s energy needs and provide much needed jobs. But is it feasible? Mike Kelly reports

IT seems that despite the best efforts of the Tory governments of Margaret Thatcher and then John Major, coal mining in Britain refuses to die.

The industry has been decimated since the end of the strike of 1984-85 with just a handful of pits left providing employment for a fraction of the pre-strike figure of 200,000.

As well as fighting to safeguard jobs, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) wanted the Government to provide a role for coal in its energy policy.

However it chose not to and, when the 25th anniversary of the strike was commemorated and re-evaluated, many people – including unlikely Tory figures like John Redwood and Norman Tebbit – admitted the speed and scale of the closures was too great.

Now, with oil prices rocketing and the reserves held in volatile unpredictable countries, and with the UK struggling to meet its target for renewable energy, coal is back on the agenda.

Ian Lavery, MP for Wansbeck and former President of the National Union of Miners, raised the issue at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool last week, in effect calling for the re-birth of the coal mining industry.

To him it’s not just a sentimental suggestion but a solution to a series of difficult questions the country now faces.

He said: “There is going to be an energy gap and what are the alternatives? Not many people are happy about nuclear power. Gas prices are going through the roof and oil will only get more expensive and oil is dirtier than coal.

“The renewables aren’t meeting any of the targets and aren’t likely to. Where is energy going to come from?”

The answer, according to Mr Lavery, is under our very noses, or more accurately, our feet. It is estimated there are hundreds of millions of tons of coal still unmined in the UK – 500 million tonnes in Northumberland and Durham extending out under the North Sea alone.

He said: “I recognise, clearly, that it has got to be burned cleanly, I’m not shouting it from the roof tops that we should just burn it whatever the circumstances. We can bring in carbon capture storage technology.”

Under the previous Labour administration there had been plans to introduce four ‘pilot projects’ subsidised by the Government through a levy on electricity bills to develop carbon capture and storage units at coal fired power stations.