The 274 ultra-emission sites depicted on this map -- the yellowish-brown or lignite-coloured circles -- are the locations associated with coal.
Of the 1796 sites identified in the TROPOMI/Kayrros data, it is the oil and gas emitter sites -- the subject of the 2022 article in Science -- that have been the principal object of global methane policy. They are the "lowest of low-hanging fruit for mitigating climate change," for the International Energy Agency. These are the 1199 red circles on the map. But the 1800 Histories project is also concerned with the 274 coal sites and the 323 sites -- the green circles -- associated with "human" activity, principally landfill.
The map of the 274 coal sites is only a glimpse -- as though through the clouds that cover the the landmasses of the old industrial and materialist revolutions -- of the worldwide geography of methane and coal. There are coal mines that were invisible to TROPOMI because they were obscured by the heavy skies of the northern hemisphere, and others that could not be seen because they were so close to the equator. There were no ultra emission sites observed in Indonesia, the second largest coal exporting country after Australia. The extent of emissions associated with diffuse sources of methane -- in thousands of operating and abandoned coal mines -- is also underestimated in data concerned only with the largest emission sites, as are methane emissions from diffuse "human" sources, including agriculture.
The lignite-coloured map is a vast panorama, all the same, of the long history of coal production around the world, and of the possibilities, now, for reducing methane emissions and improving the local environment, health and safety of mining communities. About ten percent of all methane emissions are from coal, and they are expected to continue growing even with declining coal production. More than half could be avoided with existing technologies.
The largest number of the coal ultra emission sites observed -- 97 -- is in China, followed by the US, with 76, and Australia with 62. There are 12 in Russia, 10 in Kazakhstan, 9 in South Africa, 4 in Poland, 1 in India, 1 in Bangladesh, 1 in Serbia and 1 in Ukraine.
Each of these sites has its own history, of multiple intersecting kinds. They are locations within the economic history of industrial change, and the business history of rising and declining companies. Their history is a story of the labor movement and of the organization of work. The communities in which the mines were constructed (or abandoned) have lived amidst water, air and land pollution, sometimes over the course of centuries. They are sites of memory, including the memory of terrible explosions. They were places -- in the words of an inventory of Scottish coal -- of "an extraordinary and unique working environment in which teamwork and camaraderie were a vital part of everyday life."
There are coal mines that have been in operation since the nineteenth century, and in one -- the methane-rich Jharia mine in eastern India-- coalbed fires have been burning underground since 1916. There are other mines that will be the source of methane emissions far into the future. Underground coal mines are closed, and some are flooded to contain the methane (and extinguish the fires.) The soil shifts, groundwater seeps into the old mining spaces, the coal-bearing rocks settle, rain patterns change, underground tunnels collapse. In the conclusion of a recent study of coal mine methane emissions over the period to 2100, "even with aggressive climate policies, AMM [abandoned mine methane] resources are likely to grow [and] their role in total methane emissions will increase."
To understand the history of these sites -- including their recent history, in the momentous changes in coal ownership and operation of the 21st century -- is to begin to explore the possibilities for site-specific as well as global mitigation of the effects of climate change. It is also to imagine a "just transition" in the places that have borne many of the costs, as well as the benefits, of the multiple industrial revolutions of the past century.
The 1800 Histories project will present some of these histories, and some of the work of individuals and groups associated with environmental improvement in and around the sites. This will be a way, we hope, of contributing to policies to reduce methane emissions. It will also be a contribution to a larger history of the causes of climate change. For the micro-histories of the coal methane emission sites are themselves stories -- sometimes dramatic stories -- of economic life in the epoch of fossil fuels.