Abstract
In many circles, brown coal continues to be viewed as a cheap source of energy, resulting in numerous investments in new opencast brown coal mines. Such a perception of brown coal energy is only possible if the external costs associated with mining and burning coal are not considered. In past studies, external cost analysis has focused on the external costs of coal burning and associated emissions. This paper focuses on the extraction phase and assesses the external costs to agriculture associated with the resulting depression cone. This paper discusses the difficulties researchers face in estimating agricultural losses resulting from the development of a depression cone due to opencast mineral extraction. In the case of brown coal, the impacts are of a geological, natural-climatic, agricultural-productive, temporal, and spatial nature and result from a multiplicity of interacting factors. Then, a methodology for counting external costs in crop production was proposed. The next section estimates the external costs of crop production arising from the operation of opencast mines in the Konin-Turek brown coal field, which is located in central Poland. The analyses conducted showed a large decrease in grain and potato yields and no effect of the depression cone on sugar beet levels. Including the estimated external costs in the cost of producing electricity from mined brown coal would significantly worsen the profitability of that production.
Highlights
Lignite is accumulated in fairly shallow deposits, it is most often mined in open pits, whereas in the case of hard coal, especially in Europe, underground mines are more common
In order to fulfil Georgescu-Roegen’s principle of absolute totality [36] for the processes associated with opencast lignite mining, it is necessary to determine the temporal and spatial extent of the impact of the opencast in three areas: coal extraction, the impact of the depression funnel created in the coal mining process on agriculture, and the impact on the rest of nature, including humans
When calculating the full external cost associated with open-pit mining of raw materials for agriculture, external costs stemming from the following must be taken into consideration:
Summary
200–280 billion Mg (Gt) and account for 20–25% of global coal reserves [1,2,3,4] With this background, the utilization of lignite for energy production is expected to remain a common practice in the decades to come since the availability of lignite is considerable in many countries of Europe and the world [5]. In the countries with abundant fossil fuel resources, exploitation of more coal deposits is carried out or scheduled; new coal-fired and lignite-fired power plants are being put into operation or are planned to be launched. This applies to China, India, Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Japan, South Africa and the Philippines [14,15]
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