Here is my personal perspective on coal in the UK, I think I am last of a generation that truly knew coal so might as well share the realities of 'coal life'...
My parents lived in a rural English cottage primarily heated by coal. Although the village was large enough to have a pub there was no gas mains put in during the post WW2 years when such infrastructure was put in place. Approximately 5 years ago they moved two miles down the road primarily to have a modern house with amenities such as heating.
Over the years the fireplace situation changed from the original Victorian open fire to an enclosed 'wood burning stove' type of thing that actually was used for coal.
Supply also changed. Initially (1970's) the coal was definitely British with a lot of local infrastructure for coal things. You would frequently see 'the coalman' on his rounds, dropping off sacks full of the stuff in different people's coal bunkers. We found it funny that our cousins from domesticated Surrey had not seen coal before or knew what it was.
At quite a young age various fire related duties were given to us as kids. Going outside in the dark on a slippery overgrown path to get the coal in was an adventure where anything could happen. Admittedly mining the coal would have been a bit more treacherous, but, during short winter days there was no opportunity to plan ahead and do the coal getting during daylight, dry hours.
Different friends would have different coal in their houses, so some friend's house might have chunky low grade coal (or even wood) rather than the preferred anthracite. Wet coal was obviously the enemy, the bottom of the coal bunker would obviously be a puddle - another operational aspect that could be rectified.
The most useful 'coal skill' is being able to light a fire. There are other useful skills learned along the way. Being able to use a shovel with daily training - useful for not having soft hands and being able to do related tasks such as gardening. Preparing kindling - skill with an axe should be a sport. Then there is the literacy. Old newspapers are used with wood (and maybe firelighters) to get things started. In preparing the paper a lot of news is read, days after it was supposed to be read, which is probably a better time to read the news and understand it properly.
More newspaper reading can be done whilst creating a 'draft'. Here a broadsheet paper is held across the front of the fireplace to reveal a 3"-6" gap at the bottom, through which air rushes through. In this 'boost' phase there are dangers of setting fire to the newspaper and the whole chimney as well as the whole house. Ideally this firestarting is quite terrifying because of the noise - should sound like a rocket. However, get the kindling level wrong and the coal still may not be properly lit, so this sort of failed fire looks good and then is dead minutes later.
Other fire situations include 'keeping it in' overnight. Here you don't want to burn out all the fuel, you want to be able to open the oxygen supply in the morning by pulling ash away for the fire to be truly 'awake' again. I don't believe the fire is burning efficiently in this powered down mode.
In a house heated with just the one fire the kitchen is cold until the oven goes on. Therefore vegetable prep and such like happens in the front room, with waste going on the fire so long as it is not plastic, metal or glass. It is fun to have an incinerator in your front room and be able to ask 'will it burn?' to which the answer would always be the same.
Some friends houses had fireplaces without a grate, this was for burning primarily wood on a bed of ashes. Others had actual wood burning stoves that mostly turned wet wood into noxious gases very slowly with imaginary heat given off during the process. Best of all were Rayburn/Aga things where you feel like you are driving a steam locomotive when 'operating' one of them for heat/cooking.
The old lady next door died when the 400 year old lintel above her fireplace caught light due to poor chimney sweeping practices. Another passing neighbour put a fire out in our own chimney that she just happened to see whilst driving past. Putting out a chimney fire was knowledge that you had back then.
We notionally had 'coal central heating' but that 'dream' never worked mostly due to wet coal or sulphur problems. Theoretically you could get oil powered central heating and new residents to the village did just that. A lot of my school friends were like us in having just the one room effectively heated in the house, i.e. with no warm study area.
With the property boom and how that changed, coal had to go, so now coal is more of a decorative thing you can buy instead of an all in one BBQ kit. There will be runny goo coming out of the non-recycled bag of coal and the choice of rwo dozen varieties of coal is just not there any more. The old coal was British, the new stuff comes from continents far, far away. When coal was British it seemed obscene to use other power sources such as LPG or gas from Russia given how far it travelled compared to local. But then it seems crazy sending coal half the way around the world for it to be cheaper.
LPG - Calor Gas - those were an alternative heat supply, if you had a car then gas bottles could be obtained. These created lots of condensation but a blast from the normal fire in the evening would drive any damp away.
At no stage did I ever think about emissions to the wider atmosphere. I could even be starting the fire and watching a programme about acid rain in Scandinavia and not think my actions were anything but benign and normal for a normal human lifestyle. Coal is heavy and carbon coloured (imaginably) so it should be possible to put two and two together and realise that the coal scuttle and coal on the fire is going to give out ~10Kg of CO2 'easily'.
The miner strike of the early 1980's was a bit of a career limiting move for coal in the UK. There was politics rather than economics going on there, which defied common sense. As noted by the news coal is generally still on the UK power menu, and was most of baseline until the 'dash for gas' that happened a long time after the National Union of Mineworkers were seen to. So during this time coal was bought on world markets, so lots of open-cast mines in Poland were busy rather than UK deep pit mines. Coal from places like Columbia could have been mined by 'children' without the protections of a union. Some but not all of the closed pits could definitely compete but that would have required miners. Miners had brought down the previous Heath (Tory) government so Maggie Thatcher's advisers were very much wanting to finish off the miners and every other union!
I believe that it would have been far better for the UK to have kept mining back then as many of these deep mine pits are lost as soon as the pumps are turned off. With the 'sunk cost' in these deep mines we should have brought every last nugget up to the surface before abandoning them. This would have kept some miners gainfully employed until the 'no more coal' problem comes along, rather than having them live the rest of their days on the dole. The UK balance of payments would have been better too as that coal bought on the spot market is just money flowing out of the country. The above-ground coal mountains (from the good pits) could be seen as a strategic energy resource, not some public works effort. This would also get around any WTO type rules.
Also crucial to coal in the UK is the story of steel. A long time ago the best ores for steel could be found next to the best coal for making steel next to a convenient water supply and transport links to the docks. But then we used up all of our iron ores and had to go shopping for them on the global market. After a while people wondered why bring huge quantities of ore halfway around the world when that part could be done more locally with cheaper labour. So steel became something the UK was not able to compete at except in very specialist markets. So all of that went to Asia complete with the shipbuilding that was up there with coal and steel as something that kept millions of people gainfully employed in the UK.
Today's struggles - Brexit/Trump - are nothing compared to how divided the UK was during the miner's strike when the notion of socialism was destroyed as a viable belief system.
My parents lived in a rural English cottage primarily heated by coal. Although the village was large enough to have a pub there was no gas mains put in during the post WW2 years when such infrastructure was put in place. Approximately 5 years ago they moved two miles down the road primarily to have a modern house with amenities such as heating.
Over the years the fireplace situation changed from the original Victorian open fire to an enclosed 'wood burning stove' type of thing that actually was used for coal.
Supply also changed. Initially (1970's) the coal was definitely British with a lot of local infrastructure for coal things. You would frequently see 'the coalman' on his rounds, dropping off sacks full of the stuff in different people's coal bunkers. We found it funny that our cousins from domesticated Surrey had not seen coal before or knew what it was.
At quite a young age various fire related duties were given to us as kids. Going outside in the dark on a slippery overgrown path to get the coal in was an adventure where anything could happen. Admittedly mining the coal would have been a bit more treacherous, but, during short winter days there was no opportunity to plan ahead and do the coal getting during daylight, dry hours.
Different friends would have different coal in their houses, so some friend's house might have chunky low grade coal (or even wood) rather than the preferred anthracite. Wet coal was obviously the enemy, the bottom of the coal bunker would obviously be a puddle - another operational aspect that could be rectified.
The most useful 'coal skill' is being able to light a fire. There are other useful skills learned along the way. Being able to use a shovel with daily training - useful for not having soft hands and being able to do related tasks such as gardening. Preparing kindling - skill with an axe should be a sport. Then there is the literacy. Old newspapers are used with wood (and maybe firelighters) to get things started. In preparing the paper a lot of news is read, days after it was supposed to be read, which is probably a better time to read the news and understand it properly.
More newspaper reading can be done whilst creating a 'draft'. Here a broadsheet paper is held across the front of the fireplace to reveal a 3"-6" gap at the bottom, through which air rushes through. In this 'boost' phase there are dangers of setting fire to the newspaper and the whole chimney as well as the whole house. Ideally this firestarting is quite terrifying because of the noise - should sound like a rocket. However, get the kindling level wrong and the coal still may not be properly lit, so this sort of failed fire looks good and then is dead minutes later.
Other fire situations include 'keeping it in' overnight. Here you don't want to burn out all the fuel, you want to be able to open the oxygen supply in the morning by pulling ash away for the fire to be truly 'awake' again. I don't believe the fire is burning efficiently in this powered down mode.
In a house heated with just the one fire the kitchen is cold until the oven goes on. Therefore vegetable prep and such like happens in the front room, with waste going on the fire so long as it is not plastic, metal or glass. It is fun to have an incinerator in your front room and be able to ask 'will it burn?' to which the answer would always be the same.
Some friends houses had fireplaces without a grate, this was for burning primarily wood on a bed of ashes. Others had actual wood burning stoves that mostly turned wet wood into noxious gases very slowly with imaginary heat given off during the process. Best of all were Rayburn/Aga things where you feel like you are driving a steam locomotive when 'operating' one of them for heat/cooking.
The old lady next door died when the 400 year old lintel above her fireplace caught light due to poor chimney sweeping practices. Another passing neighbour put a fire out in our own chimney that she just happened to see whilst driving past. Putting out a chimney fire was knowledge that you had back then.
We notionally had 'coal central heating' but that 'dream' never worked mostly due to wet coal or sulphur problems. Theoretically you could get oil powered central heating and new residents to the village did just that. A lot of my school friends were like us in having just the one room effectively heated in the house, i.e. with no warm study area.
With the property boom and how that changed, coal had to go, so now coal is more of a decorative thing you can buy instead of an all in one BBQ kit. There will be runny goo coming out of the non-recycled bag of coal and the choice of rwo dozen varieties of coal is just not there any more. The old coal was British, the new stuff comes from continents far, far away. When coal was British it seemed obscene to use other power sources such as LPG or gas from Russia given how far it travelled compared to local. But then it seems crazy sending coal half the way around the world for it to be cheaper.
LPG - Calor Gas - those were an alternative heat supply, if you had a car then gas bottles could be obtained. These created lots of condensation but a blast from the normal fire in the evening would drive any damp away.
At no stage did I ever think about emissions to the wider atmosphere. I could even be starting the fire and watching a programme about acid rain in Scandinavia and not think my actions were anything but benign and normal for a normal human lifestyle. Coal is heavy and carbon coloured (imaginably) so it should be possible to put two and two together and realise that the coal scuttle and coal on the fire is going to give out ~10Kg of CO2 'easily'.
The miner strike of the early 1980's was a bit of a career limiting move for coal in the UK. There was politics rather than economics going on there, which defied common sense. As noted by the news coal is generally still on the UK power menu, and was most of baseline until the 'dash for gas' that happened a long time after the National Union of Mineworkers were seen to. So during this time coal was bought on world markets, so lots of open-cast mines in Poland were busy rather than UK deep pit mines. Coal from places like Columbia could have been mined by 'children' without the protections of a union. Some but not all of the closed pits could definitely compete but that would have required miners. Miners had brought down the previous Heath (Tory) government so Maggie Thatcher's advisers were very much wanting to finish off the miners and every other union!
I believe that it would have been far better for the UK to have kept mining back then as many of these deep mine pits are lost as soon as the pumps are turned off. With the 'sunk cost' in these deep mines we should have brought every last nugget up to the surface before abandoning them. This would have kept some miners gainfully employed until the 'no more coal' problem comes along, rather than having them live the rest of their days on the dole. The UK balance of payments would have been better too as that coal bought on the spot market is just money flowing out of the country. The above-ground coal mountains (from the good pits) could be seen as a strategic energy resource, not some public works effort. This would also get around any WTO type rules.
Also crucial to coal in the UK is the story of steel. A long time ago the best ores for steel could be found next to the best coal for making steel next to a convenient water supply and transport links to the docks. But then we used up all of our iron ores and had to go shopping for them on the global market. After a while people wondered why bring huge quantities of ore halfway around the world when that part could be done more locally with cheaper labour. So steel became something the UK was not able to compete at except in very specialist markets. So all of that went to Asia complete with the shipbuilding that was up there with coal and steel as something that kept millions of people gainfully employed in the UK.
Today's struggles - Brexit/Trump - are nothing compared to how divided the UK was during the miner's strike when the notion of socialism was destroyed as a viable belief system.