The hidden threat: Abandoned coal mine methane emissions in the EU

Raymond Pilcher, Chair of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s Group of Experts on Coal Mine Methane, “Until coal mining companies and the countries that host these mines can fully account for methane resources that are co-located with coal deposits, we cannot fully appreciate [...] the threat that it poses to the local and global environment if it escapes to the atmosphere unused.”. [...] Leveraging the peer-reviewed Model for Calculating Coal Mine Methane (MC2M) — the product of a 2020 study led by Nazar Kholod of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and industry experts — GEM estimated the coal mine methane (CMM) emissions at closure for these mines.2 Poland has 20 abandoned and closed coal mines, 80% of which are deep underground hard coal mines. [...] According to the greenhouse gas inventory data reported by the EU in 2023, which specifically accounted for emissions from abandoned underground coal mines, such mines were responsible for emitting 235 kt of methane in 2021, representing approximately one-quarter of total emissions from the coal mining sector. [...] A look at the numbers illustrates the difficulty of determining the proportion of dry and flooded mines: Among the identified 53 underground type of abandoned mines closed between 2015 and 2023 in GEM’s dataset, only 19 (36%) had known or assumed post-closure conditions (13 dry, 6 flooded); the status of the remaining 34 mines (64%) is unknown (Figure 4). [...] About the Global Coal Mine Tracker The Global Coal Mine Tracker (GCMT) is a public registry of the world’s coal mines and proposed projects.