What’s COAL & Why Do We Mine Coal?

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COAL
Coal is a sedimentary rock, sometimes on the metamorphic side, that comes in 3 main types or coal grades. These include: Lignite, Bituminous, and Anthracite Coals. Coal forms from plant matter in swamps in a so if conditions that doesn’t break down quickly and becomes peat. Once peat is compressed and compacted it will begin the process changes in moisture, volatile, and carbon content. This is what gives us the different grades of coal. Coal is mined around the world, especially where ancient Carboniferous swamps once existed many hundreds of millions of years ago. In the United States, there is young and old coal seams, and much of the coal has come from the East in places like the West Virginia bituminous and Pennsylvania anthracite coal, and the huge coal deposits in places like the Wyoming Powder River Basin, North Dakota’s Williston Basin, sporadic coal seams in Utah, and even lignite coal from Washington state. These coals range from Cenozoic coal (Eocene, Paleocene), to Mesozoic (Cretaceous) to Paleozoic (Carboniferous, some Permian). Coal is controversial because it causes environmental damage when burnt, such as the sulfuric acid rain (the reason for scrubbers), CO and CO2 emissions that lead to climate change, the environmental impacts of strip mining such as watershed damage, and the dangers of coal mining such as explosions or toxic gas exposure. The latter is the reason for our phrase, The Canary in the Coal Mine.
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