Coal fires threaten the globe

Under the right conditions, coal ignites spontaneously, and fires burn downwards, acquiring oxygen t

By Lindsey Hilsum Published 29 November 2007

Winter comes swiftly to China's far west, and the firefighters of Xinjiang are striking camp. For eight months a year, before snow and ice make their work impossible, they battle a deadly menace - raging coal fires, which throw up as much greenhouse gas as all the cars and trucks in the US.

At the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, starting on 3 December, China's reliance on coal will come under closer examination than ever before. Yet few other than specialists realise that (according to the Netherlands Earth Observation Network), China's coal fires produce between 1 and 3 per cent of global carbon emissions.

China is blessed - or cursed - with abundant coal reserves. Rich seams run for 3,000 miles from the border with Kazakhstan to the East China Sea. Under the right conditions, coal ignites spontaneously, and fires burn downwards, acquiring oxygen through fissures in the rock and tiny spaces in the earth. Some fires have been blazing for centuries; Marco Polo wrote of "burning mountains along the Silk Road".

In shallow fires, flames lick up from caverns and smoke rises from vents. But others burn unseen far below, sometimes reaching temperatures of 1,000°C, travelling several metres a month and consuming millions of tonnes of coal.

The firefighters manoeuvre bulldozers over the burning surface coals, billowing dust mingling with smoke in a haze of methane, sulphur and other toxic gases, the temperature in the cab rising to 50°C in summer. Men in flimsy masks pump water to cool the ground, injecting mud and slurry down cracks in the rock to block the oxygen that feeds the fires. They cover the ground with soil, and measure the underground temperature through a tube until it has cooled to 70°C, when the fire can be deemed extinguished.

"The Chinese government is under pressure to reduce emissions, so we firefighters are also under pressure to speed up our work," said Cao Jianwen, a geologist with the Xinjiang Coal Fire Administration. In the past, the emphasis was on the pollutants produced, the hazards to people who lived in the vicinity and the wasted coal reserves, but now, with climate change in mind, the whole world is watching.

In Beijing, 1,500 miles away, Professor Li Jing stared at his computer screen, in effect looking down on the fires from on high. He is involved in a Sino-German project using remote sensing from satellites and aircraft to pinpoint coal fires. "When coal burns underground, the temperature rises on the surface. By using remote sensing imagery, especially thermal infrared technology, we can clearly locate the rising heat and quickly identify the fire area," he said.

China relies on coal for two-thirds of its energy. Such is the pace of economic growth, that its carbon emissions now exceed those of the US. Professor Li believes that extinguishing coal fires will reduce emissions far more rapidly than trying to save energy. But his images tell him that the fires are spreading. "In the Fifties and Sixties, coal mines were owned and operated by the state. Safety and fire prevention were a big part of a strict management regime, and there weren't many coal fires," he said. "But in the last few decades, many private mine businesses appeared, which ignore safety and fire prevention. As a result, we see fires everywhere now."

In the Wuda coalfield in Inner Mongolia, most fires did not erupt spontaneously but were sparked by careless mining. At a typical open-cast mine, diggers scrape away the soil to expose the seam. In the scooped-out section below, where coal has already been removed, smoke and flames escape from fissures; the soil has not been pushed back to prevent fire.

Government inspectors visit once a year, but reportedly make only half-hearted attempts to close unsafe or illegal mines. Most stop operations for just a few weeks. Mine bosses, in league with local officials, flout environmental laws with impunity. China's demand for coal is so high that power stations may not ask the provenance of supplies. Running a small mine is an easy way to get rich, and private mine owners either do not know or do not care about fires.

In Xinjiang, Cao Jianwen showed off the smooth, strangely whitish surface of Liuhanggou, Sulphur Valley, where the country's biggest fire used to consume an estimated 1.8 million tonnes of coal a year. A plaque mounted on a hill praises the firefighters who battled for four years until it was extinguished in 2004.

But, hidden by hills a few hundred yards away, smoke was pouring from vents in the ground. Tyre marks and hastily raked soil told the story - illegal miners had appeared, probably at night, hacked away a few tonnes, and reignited the coal.

Extinguishing coal fires is a major contribution China could make to cutting carbon emissions, but if the government fails to regulate mining, the work of its firefighters will be in vain.

Lindsey Hilsum is China correspondent for Channel 4 News

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5 comments

Sat, 2007-12-01 14:08 — davidhill

The article is to the point but where China now appears to be immune to criticism or sanctions for its constant march towards polluting the whole world. A week ago the world’s most polluting carbon dioxide nation opened one of its largest coal-fired power station of some 4,000 MW in capacity but where many more of these vast coal-fired power plants are now in the pipeline and coming on stream at the average rate of two every week. As we also know under the Kyoto Protocol, China is free to pollute whatever it wishes up to 2012 but where in a further five years time, carbon emissions will be immense or even criminal to say the very least. This week the EU sanctioned through its European Investment Bank a US700 million loan to China to help curb these emissions. The irony of this is that we in the West are now feeding the whole China process and in many ways, promoting it. I am not against loans to help nations but two questions have to be asked. Why is the loan without the provision, like all other EU loans, for the Chinese to purchase European technologies? Why with highest balance of payments and reserves is China being given this loan? It appears to me that China is now so feared that we try to placate the excesses of this nation by trying to be the nice guy and hope that they will change their ways. Nothing could be further away from the truth, as China will not stop now until it is the No.1 economy in the world and where it has no intension of stopping any emissions whatever the environmental costs to the world-at-large. Indeed, one has only to consider how they think and where Chinese officials have rejected all calls for mandatory caps on emissions and where they say industrialized nations should shoulder most of the burden in helping developing countries like China cope with climate change. Added to this China is not bothered about the 350,000 to 400,000 premature deaths a year that are attributed to pollution, so if they are not concerned about the deaths of their people, they are certainly not bothered about cutting back pollution. But how farcical can this be for eventually when China rules the world economically, they will give nothing back then to the West. By then of course, our astute politicians will have sold the West totally down the river and where our future generations will suffer immensely at the hands of our present political classes.

Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation
Bern. Switzerland

Ps Carbon capture or sequestration is not the answer either as what we are doing here is basically putting off as usual, problems that our future generations will have to solve. Therefore carbon capture is just putting off the inevitable and where the big multinationals will make literally billions out of a regime of continuation and where no real solutions are found. Indeed, if this vast amount of carbon leaches out of the ground or oceans in the future, we might as well say goodbye to human life on this planet. Therefore politicians are presently dabbling with humankind's very existence.
What in essence should be happening is that governments around the world should be investing in the development of a centralised global centre that solves the world's immense problems, not putting them off for others to solve at a later date. We as independent scientific minds have been telling governments for a decade now to develop the concept of the ORE-STEM complex with its 1000 plus incubator centres around the world. Simply, this mechanism harnesses the world's creative thinking and siphons it into this huge centre to solve the biggest problems that confronts humankind and possibly save it from extinction. It is common sense in reality, as only a mechanism large enough to stop the worst effects of global warming and provide the necessary answers to famine, supporting the population explosion (now predicted to be a minimum of 10 billion by 2050 and possibly even 12 billion) and alternative energy sources (new discoveries) et al. Therefore the world has to force forward what the independent scientific community is saying, for if not, we certainly run the greatest risk of all, the extinction of the human experience itself.

Thu, 2007-11-29 18:12 — tonyrobin

Interesting article condeming China for its use of coal, and that China is reliant to 66% for coal to produce its energy. This may be true, but one does not have far to travel at all to see how the UK is relying on coal to an extent of 73% for its energy production. Not on the same huge scale as China, but still !!!. The UK is still persevering with its fossil fuels for energy, and with new coal powered power stations on line, the emission of CO2 will continue unabated. These new power stations, called clean coal, if ever there was such a thing, will emit approx 1000lbs CO2/Mwh at their best, and with increased MWh output, as the UK needs more power, total emissions will not reduce, in fact they will increase.
New CHP plants are on line, the huge one at Immingham, said to be the largest, cleanest and most efficient in Europe. The only truth here is that it will be the largest.
It will be using gas as fuel, had they forgot that gas is a fossil fuel. This plant will produce 1989000Mwh of electricity and at the same time emit a whopping 870000 tons of CO2 yearly. This gives the plant an intensity of 875 lbs of CO2 for every Mwh of energy. Nearby, there are 2 more CHP plants at Glenford and Stallingborough. The latter produces 6200 Mwh of energy and emits 18600 tons of CO2 every year, the plant at Glenford has similar figures. The intensity ratings at these 2 plants are 6000 lbs of CO2 for every Mwh of energy. Why these two plants are still running is a complete mystery. Of course the UK need not worry about the emissions, as these 3 plants are situated right on the east coast of Lincolnshire, so all the emissions go out to sea and across to Denmark. CHP plants are really a no no in the UK, only now are they popping up like, well not mushrooms, more like "morels" the poisonous toadstools. Sweden has had CHP plants since the late 50s, and they now supply more than 50% of private homes and almost all industries with heat. The fuel they use is from forest, industry and sawmill waste, together with all household waste. In Sweden no HH waste is taken to landfill sites, this was stopped years ago. Many older landfill sites still emit methane gas, which is collected and used for fuel for cars and other transport means. Sweden has the first train in the world running off gas from manure, and she has the largest fleet of buses in the world that use bio gas instead of diesel. CHP plants right across the country have emissions approx 45 Lbs CO2 /Mwh. Swedens electricity is produced by hydro and nuclear, making it zero in emissions.

Thu, 2007-12-13 07:51 — pronatalist

Underground coal fires can't reasonably be controlled, so why not let them spread naturally? Nature doesn't really need our "help" to be "natural." Safety should be promoted, but cheap and abundant energy for growing cities and naturally expanding populations is far more important than preventing all possible fires. Like they say, coal can ignite spontaneously, and we must still mine it somehow, as much electricity still comes affordably from coal. Human population growth should only be accomodated, never "controlled." Develop more coal, drill more oil wells, explore alternative energy sources, expand nuclear power plants, develop all economically viable options, to keep energy and ability to stay warm in people's homes, affordable to even the working poor.

Environmentalism is exxagerated these days, as if people don't matter anymore. What of the many needs, of the increasingly populous many? People should be free, and the natural flow of human life welcomed to increasingly fill the world naturally. People ought not to directly pollute their bodies, with nasty cancer stick cigarettes, needless tattooing inks, nor side-effect-ridden unnatural experimental shoddy contraceptives. Let babies push out naturally, and encourage large families worldwide, so that far more people may enjoy life.

Sun, 2007-12-02 10:10 — tonyrobin

Dr David Hill, thank you for your comment, which gets right to the heart of the world problem, it could well happen that some politicians may even read it, if they can get their heads out of the sand,

Mon, 2007-12-03 23:23 — writeon

Unfortunately, we are going to see and suffer an enormous increase in the ammount of coal we use. As gas and oil prices rise, and world production starts to fall inexorably, "King Coal" is going to make an historic comeback. I like someone to interview Arthur Scargill and find out what he thinks about it. He'd probably too radical and militant for these conservative times. Whatever happened to Arthur? He lost a battle, but was he really sent into internal exile?