Coal is the biggest source of electricity.
Coal image from www.shutterstock.com
From formation to export, the key facts and figures.
China’s coal future is up in the air.
Coal image from www.shutterstock.com
China’s crackdown on pollution and climate change may yet see coal use fall - but it’s no certainty.
Carbon capture and storage can clean up coal power.
Coal image from www.shutterstock.com
Despite advances in technology, carbon capture and storage could be unsettled by renewable upstarts.
India is the world’s third-largest coal producer, but also the second-largest importer.
Coal image from www.shutterstock.com
India is at a crossroads: how to bring electricity to millions of people without power, while also dealing with climate change?
Coal is a relatively cheap, abundant and well-established source of energy.
Ray Hornsay/Flickr
Millions of people live without access to electricity. Now it’s a battle between coal and renewables to bring cheap power.
Miners were fired by a sense of solidarity but also by dangerous working conditions, which produced high death and injury rates.
Janet Lindenmuth/Flickr
Miners were among the first workers to organise into trade unions from the middle of the 1700s, battling a lack of legal recognition and resistance from the mine owners.
Coal powered the machinery and lit what English poet William Blake described as ‘dark satanic mills’.
Sam Leighton/Flickr
Britain lucked out with its coal deposits – but other nations have developed without coal.
Coal has provided us with some stunning fossils.
Bart Bernardes/Flickr
Despite its insidious influence on the climate and our health, coal has a lesser-known positive side to its otherwise dark soul. It has provided us with some stunning fossils.