Politics, specialist science and the mining supply industry are equally bound to tradition and committed to the future. All stakeholders are now committed to the energy transition. The state government in North Rhine-Westphalia is pursuing the goal of climate-neutral electricity generation by 2050. To this end, renewable energies are to be expanded and further advanced. In their coalition agreement, the ...
Read More »Fachartikel 05_2023
EU-Wide Regulator for Methane Emissions Makes Sense, but not for the Decommissioned Coal Sector in Germany
The issue of methane (CH4) has been on the European Union’s agenda for a long time and is now being pushed in order to achieve the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by 2050, on the one hand overzealously, but also with little knowledge about the origin and source of methane emissions in active and abandoned ...
Read More »Mine Gas – Climate Protection and Energy Industry Regulation
Mine gas from abandoned mines is a special topic of European and national climate policy. It continues to threaten to escape from coal deposits that have not yet been affected by flooding. The initial support for the utilisation of mine gas for electricity generation via the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), which expires for most mine gas plants by the ...
Read More »Release of Mine Gas at the Surface – Status of Safety Measures and Monitoring in the Course of the Mine Water Rise
In order to keep the mine workings in the German coal mining industry dry, the mine water had to be lifted from great depths and brought to the surface for centuries. With the phase out of hard coal mining in the Ruhr area and in Ibbenbüren in 2018, the original purpose of this mine water management was lost. Since then, ...
Read More »Capturing and Utilisation of Landfill Gas
From municipal landfills, methane-containing landfill gas is produced during the conversion of biogenic organic matter, which has a very high greenhouse gas potential – more than 28 times stronger than carbon dioxide (CO2) over 100 years. Based on decades of experience, it is extremely difficult to adequately capture this landfill gas in a heterogeneous heap (landfill body) – due, among ...
Read More »International Efforts for the Abatement of Methane Emissions in the Energy Sector
The abatement of greenhouse gas emissions has long been a focal point of international climate policy as an important aspect in achieving or as the direct topic of climate targets. As a greenhouse gas with a relatively short life time in the atmosphere and strong global warming potential compared to carbon dioxide, methane emission abatement measures present an opportunity for ...
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