New Scientist
Volume 221, Issue 2956, 15 February 2014, Pages 36-41
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Feature
Fire in the hole: after fracking comes coal

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0262-4079(14)60331-6 Get rights and content

Is old king coal the answer to our energy prayers, or the start of the next environmental disaster?

Section snippets

All systems go

Despite those setbacks, Julie Lauder, CEO of the UK-based UCG Association, says the success of the Chinchilla trials was a “eureka moment” for the nascent industry and there have never been more UCG trials set to go round the world (see map). At Cook Inlet in Alaska , and Swan Hills in Alberta, Canada , there are plans to go commercial as early as 2015. Excited by the success of shale gas in the US, UCG enthusiasts think their time may have come. And nowhere more so than in the UK, where they

Not just a fuel

Such gas is undoubtedly valuable. Most obviously, the methane can be delivered to domestic consumers or burned in power stations to generate electricity. But there are other options. In Australia they have been turning it into liquid fuel for vehicles. “Unlike with shale gas, we are not just bringing methane to the surface,” said Bradbury. “We are bringing up a cocktail of gases.” Five Quarter is eyeing another potential market for these gases (see “Chemical Toolkit”).

North-east England's large

Burning dilemma

What to do? Either we have to leave the fuel in the ground, or develop a global industry for capturing CO2 at the source and storing it out of harm's way. In the case of UCG that would mean capturing the CO2 produced both when the coal is burned underground and when the resulting methane is burned in power stations. Climate scientists such as Myles Allen at the University of Oxford argue that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the only practical way forward. And this is where UCG has something

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