Coal making a comeback in much of Europe, but not in France

In the European Union, coal is making a comeback, from Spain to Poland, home to one of the biggest strip mines in the world. Spain has become a leader in the storage of carbon dioxide emissions from coal. In the Asturias region, located in the northern part of the country, researchers are attempting to inject CO² back into coal and then extract or eject it as usable methane gas. The Germans, while investing heavily in renewable energy sources, are depending more and more on coal for the production of electricity, 42% of the country’s needs, at a time when nuclear power plants are being phased out.

All in all, coal-powered generators produce 25% of electricity in the European Union, that figure rising to 87% in Poland. The Poles, with coal resources to see them through the next half-century, prefer their energy independence to buying cleaner natural gas from Russia. With memories still fresh of Soviet domination, they are ready and willing to put up with the pollution from their giant open-air mine in Bełchatów, in south-central Poland, and its adjoining power station, which produces 40 million tons of greenhouse gasses per year.



The French, on the other hand, have largely rejected coal and its by-products. Coal-powered generators produce a mere 4% of the country’s electricity, and, for the moment, fracking is not authorized. In northern France, in the Nord-Pas de Calais region, once the heart of the country’s mining industry, there is, however, some interest in extracting coal bed methane as a replacement for conventional natural gas, despite local protests that the reserves are too small and the price of drilling too high.

In this region, one of the poorest of France, where unemployment hovers around 14%, mayors would like to see the money invested to improve housing and attract “clean” industries. They also fear that methane extraction could very well be a first step towards the legalization of fracking, and consider the non-conventional drilling of coal bed methane a threat to local water supplies because of the wastewater it produces.

Though suspicious of coal today, the French have carefully and lovingly preserved their mining past. In 2012, the Nord-Pas de Calais coal mining region, located in the far north-eastern corner of France, was chosen to be part of the World Heritage List of Unesco for its “remarkable cultural landscape, the result of almost three hundred years of coal mining and the technological and urban developments associated with the mining industry.” In an area stretching across about 75 miles, in a “living” museum, implanted in a landscape where people work and have their homes, former mines have been turned into theaters, eco-museums and art galleries—and culm banks (called “terrils” in French), some rising to an elevation of over 700 feet, can be explored along graded hiking paths.



At the heart of the region, in the city of Lens, on the site of a former mine, the Louvre, one of the world’s great museums, inaugurated a new extension in December 2012. There, for free, visitors can view a rotating collection of art from the Louvre in Paris, including a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci (though not the Mona Lisa—she never moves!), monumental Greek statues, and pottery and porcelain from Turkey and Iran. Imagine such treasures, exhibited for free and on a daily basis in Pottsville or Hazleton and you’ll have an idea of what this museum means to the city of Lens and to inhabitants of the region.



The nearby town of Lewarde is home to France’s biggest museum of mining, Centre historique minier du Nord-Pas de Calais, which, until June 2nd, will be hosting a special exhibit devoted to “men and machines,” tracing almost three hundred years of mining technology. The site of the museum is that of a former mine, the Delloye “fosse” or “pit,” and visitors, much like at The Pioneer Tunnel Coal Mine in Ashland, can explore its underground tunnels. They can also visit the building where coal was sorted by “galibots,” the French word for “breaker boys,” and by women, who also worked in the mines.

The extensive complex of redbrick buildings and underground installations that is home to the museum includes several permanent exhibits: one documents the formation of coal over millions of years; another is devoted to daily life in the mines and includes visits to shower and dressing rooms as well as to the room where mining lamps were stored; another tells the story of the role of horses in the mines; still another explores energy resources past, present and future. An important place is also reserved for the testimonies of those who worked in the mines. From them, visitors can learn about the first day on the job, the dangers miners encountered underground, and their life at home and at the local bar or “estaminet,” where, at the end of the day, they shared a drink with their buddies.



Throughout the region, just like in Schuylkill County, there are company towns (known as “corons”), still inhabited today. The houses that compose them are built in all shapes and sizes, though nearly all are made of brick. These homes, inhabited by miners or their children, are also a part of the “living museum” of Nord-Pas de Calais, where the French have built an impressive and moving monument to the heritage of coal.



As for coal’s future, though it plays only a minor role in France’s energy production today, there are stirrings here and there that seem to indicate things may soon change. In February of this year, Arnaud Montebourg, Minister of Industry, made a plea for “le gaz made in France,” referring to the potential for extracting France’s resources in coal bed methane.

Along with other Europeans, the French also look on with wonder and envy when they hear reports that the United States, thanks in part to shale, may begin exporting oil and gas by 2025 and possibly achieve energy independence by 2030. Considering those predictions, even the most hardcore opponents to fracking and fossil fuels might begin to have second thoughts.

Yet, predictions remain just that, predictions, not facts. And the “Halliburton loophole” of the US Energy Policy Act of 2005, which exempts fracking from certain requirements of the “Safe Drinking Water Act,” may already be depriving future generations of safe water to drink, which, if proven true, would raise the cost of energy independence beyond what anyone can afford to pay.