Energy & Power

Cover Report

From Beginning to End
Mollah Amzad Hossain, Cologne, Germany

Holz is a middle-aged woman. She was not willing to leave her ancestral village for a coalmine, but she had to for the greater interest of a nation. Now she is happy for what she says she got everything at the exchange of her village home and to see how her little sacrifice helped the nation progresses. Holz had to leave her village for Garzweiler mine near cologne in Germany. Now she is living in a new village, picturesque Orsengrad.

“I’m emotional about my old village. But, it’s also the reality that we’ve to utilize our national resources. I forgot the pain of being displaced from my ancestral village, watching that our resources are being utilized properly,” she told me.

Holz is one of many villagers who had to be resettled in phases for running three open pit coalmines near Cologne. The executives of the RWE that runs the mines say that the displacement and replacement was not so easy specially when the questions of leaving old homes and environment came. “But we could maintain our promises and now all are happy,” said Dr. Wolfram Mueller, Senior Mining Consultant.

The RWE will extract coal from the mines until 2045. It had to resettle many things including villages, townships, rivers, highways, schools churches for the sake of operation of the mines. Over 30,000 people were rehabilitated in last 50 years. Recently 8,000 people were resettled for Garzweiler-1 and 2 mines. In near future, another 5,000 families have to be rehabilitated.

Talking to a group of Bangladeshi journalists, a senior executive of the RWE said that they had to face huge opposition at the initial stage of starting of mining work. The Green Party, a partner of the German government, built huge resistance. The environmentalists also joined. “However, finally a positive decision came in favor of coal extraction,” said the official.

The main doubt was that the commitment on environment, water management and resettlement could be maintained. The Germany had to wait for a decade to see fulfillment of the pledges. The pessimists are now saying, everything has been done as it was committed.

The work for water management and environment protection will continue even up to 30 years of completion of coal extraction, but already money is being deposited for the post-extraction operation.

RWE Experience & Phulbari

We were standing on top of the 168m tower of the 1,000 MW Thermal Power Plant Niederaussem which is approximately 30 kilometer west of Cologne city in Germany. We could see from there the vast agriculture firms with wheat, sugar beet, maize, cabbage, carrot, potato and cattle feed. A number of wind turbines fitted on the tower like poles were circling idly at the middle of the fields.

Cologne and Dusseldorf cities were not far from the place, one at the east and the other at the northwest directions. The river Rheine and its tributaries were flowing through the fields.

And the huge Humbach, Garzweiler and Inden lignite mines with their long benches and rolling monster like bucket wheelers (with earth moving capacity of 240,000 cubic meters/day) and series of conveyor belts reminded all the visitors the source of energy for the power plants in the area.

Rail roads and busy traffic, scattered villages and small townships with their usual life put little attention to the visitors. Similarly, there seemed to have no time for the green forests and wetlands to waste at the middle of summer other than blossom flowers and accommodate nesting birds.

This Niederaussem Thermal Power Plant (TPP) has been producing electricity since 2005 and is considered as the super efficient coal (lignite) fired power plant. It is equipped with optimized plant technology which secures 45 percent plant efficiency from the single cycle operation. The plant is emitting 30 percent less CO2 emission compared to old coal fired power plants and it captures hazardous SO2 gas with flue gas de-sulfurization plant.

RWE, the largest energy company of Germany has been building now the world’s first new generation zero CO2 emission power plant. Such a power plant is targeted to generate electricity using coal as fuel from 2014 in Germany.

Not only the Niederaussem TPP, RWE owns and operates 4 more power plants with combined capacity of 11,000 MW which burn lignite (low calorie brown coal) as fuel. In the NRW (North Rheine Westphalia) of Germany alone RWE power plants burn approximately 85 percent of its produced 100 million tonne/annum lignite for generating power. Lignite mines supply approximately 50 percent fuel source for power generation in Germany.
Lignite mining started in the 1890s in this part of Germany but only in 1933 the first bucket wheel excavator was introduced in mining operations. As a result, in 1940, production reached at 60 million tones/ year from 23 comparatively small surface mines operated by a number of companies.

Initiatives were taken to form bigger company through merger and acquisitions. Fifteen operating small mining companies amalgamated into Reinbraun which became the leading international mining, power and utility company of Europe. Today, RWE, the successor of Reinbroun operates not only in the field of lignite mining but also in generation and distribution of electricity produced from coal, nuclear (18%), gas (11%) hydro, wind and solar energy (9%) sources.

The RWE owns Humbach, Garzweiler and Inden lignite mines in NRW and the mines have been using 22 bucket wheel excavators for overburden removal and lignite mining from various depths. The largest among the three mines produces lignite of approximately 40 million tones/ annually and the deepest mine faces already reached 450m below the surface. The average stripping ratio is about 2.6 cubic meter of overburden to each tonne of produced lignite from the mines.

To enable the mines to operate safe and to ensure dry pits, RWE mines require extensive water management operations. RWE has been pumping 550 million cubic meters of ground water with 1,400 dewatering pump wells involving 18 million Euro/year operational costs without adversely affecting neighboring communities water supply requirements, wetland conservation and firming in the area.

The RWE mines ensured measures to secure flood control in the rivers both by preventing in-pit flooding during heavy rains and stopping dirty water from the mines entering into the local water courses. RWE strictly maintains the water balance as it ensured 50 million cubic meter of infiltration of water to the groundwater table, delivers 60 million m3 of water to wetlands to prevent any adverse impacts on ecology, 40 million m3 to public water supply systems, 170 million m3 water to power plants and 280 million m3 to the adjacent rivers and lakes.

Currently Humbach mine occupies 42 Km2, Garzweilier 48 km2 and Inden 38 km2 areas with production of 39.1 Mt, 35.7 Mt and 22.6Mt respectively per annum. In 2006 RWE generated 180 billion kWh electrical energy using lignite from these three mines compared to total German electricity generation of 596 billion kWh in the same year. So far 282 km2 area was mined and 196 km2 rehabilitated for using the land for forestry, agriculture and other uses. NRW has total approved lignite reserves of 3.8 billion tones below the surface. So the mines will continue to play important role in the energy industries and for the national economy.

Cologne is a major city of Germany with 2,443 inhabitants/ km2. The density of population in the mining areas (counties) vary from 290-529 inhabitants/km2. Mining and power generation industries along with their infrastructure have made RWE as an important employer in the region.

Mining with advanced technology ensured absolute safe operations. As a result there is no major accident for decades in the mines and associated operations of RWE with an annual turnover of Euro 6574 million. In addition to Germany, RWE also sells power to UK and central and east European countries.

In Germany land use is strictly regulated by law, e.g. the authorities follow the land use plan. Lands designated for mining or industries are secured for the particular use and the inhabitants are protected with appropriate compensation rights. Currently in North Rheine Westphalia (NRW) 49.6 percent land is being used for agriculture. On the contrary 25.2 percent land is covered with forests, 1.9 percent with water bodies. Buildings and open space comprise 12.58 percent of land and industries cover 1.05 percent, roads for traffic 6.8 percent. Mining area covers only 0.6 percent and recovered area from mining covers 1.6 percent of the total land.

We were watching the clean panoramic views from the Niederaussem power plant tower top towards the vast lands of NRW of Germany. As one of the top European power and gas companies, RWE is a consultant company for Asia Energy for handling Phulbari project's most sensitive area-- water management, it was an opportunity to compare the proposed Phulbari thousands miles away from here.

The almost similar geography and geological features are there. Phulbari and Barapukuria have the same thick coal seams with thicker sand covers saturated with water. The population density of the Phulbari area is nearly 700/km2. The planned mine footprint area has less inhabitants compared to the area average. For facilitating mining approximately 200 million m3 water will required to be pumped out annually which very well can be managed to maintain the user need and to balance the ecology.

The coal at Phulbari is much superior in quality and at a shallower depth compared to Humbach mine in Germany. The mine may open new horizon for the energy sector and economic activities of the country. It may very well open a truly new horizon for the country. I was asking the question again and again to myself, what makes the mining at Phulbari difficult when we need the coal desperately at an affordable price and with reliable operational security?

RWE Power

RWE Power is Germany’s biggest power producer and a leading player in the extraction of energy raw materials.

Under the umbrella of RWE Power AG, there are more than 18,000 people at work in power plants and opencast mines, in factories, admin and subsidiaries, all helping secure Europe‘s energy.

In power generation, the Company backs a wide range of energy sources: lignite, nuclear energy and hydropower for the so-called base load, i.e. ensuring the basic power supply, while hard coal, gas and renewable energy sources, like wind and biomass, are used for the intermediate and peak load. In an experiment, solar energy, too, is used to produce electricity.

For this purpose, RWE‘s affiliate, Harpen, operates a photovoltaic system in Neurath, among other places. RWE Power is securing electricity generation in the long term by balancing economic and ecological requirements and is seeking to go on crucially shaping the energy supply.

One of the focuses of RWE Power‘s work is the Rhenish lignite mining area in the urban triangle of Cologne-Aachen-Mönchengladbach. The Company‘s opencast mines and power plants secure one third of Germany’s entire electricity supply. In North Rhine-Westphalia, as much as one half of the electricity is generated using lignite that is being produced by RWE.

RWE Power AG mines 100 million tonnes of lignite per year (total German coal production is approximately 200 Million tonnes, out of which lignite production is 175 million tones/ annum. Germany additionally imports 35 million tonnes of hard coal annually from South Africa, Poland and Russia. Some 90 percent of the lignite is used to generate electricity in the Company‘s power plants located close to the opencast mines. The rest is upgraded to make pulverized lignite, briquettes, ﬂuidized-bed lignite and coke – e.g. for use in household and industries, but also in plants for treating wastewater and for cleaning ﬂue gases. Lignite is inexpensive, gets by without any subsidies and is available in large amounts in Germany. So, it can help under-pin energy supplies in the long run as well.

Driver of Progress

From extraction to recultivation, the RWE Power is committed to the further development of opencast-mining technology.

RWE Power has always exploited the rapid progress made in information technology, but also in classic mining-related areas like mechanical engineering and materials technology, to optimize its own processes. But the driver behind technical progress in the Rhenish lignite mining area is not the mere existence of new technological options. It is the globalization and liberalization of energy markets which, by stepping up the pressures on costs, has an immediate effect on processes and operations in opencast mines: extraction and mass transportation, maintenance and water management.

In all workplaces, engineers, technicians and skilled workers alike remain compelled to do their bit in ensuring the competitiveness of Rhenish lignite by inputting a high degree of creativity. But there‘s more to it than that: changing social needs, manifested in laws and regulations, can impact technology developments, when it comes to pollution control, say. So progress in lignite mining is not merely an isolated technical issue, but also a day-to-day job in a market economy and in society.

Before An Opencast Mine

Lignite must be extracted in opencast mines, i.e. in an open pit. Underground extraction, as is familiar from the mines in the Ruhr region, is not possible in the Rhineland due to the loose layers of earth above the lignite seams. There, mining has to start by stripping the complete surface, before it can work its way into the depth; although temporary, this nevertheless amounts to serious interference with the natural and cultivated landscape. Besides excavating farmland and wooded areas and relocating roads and waters, it also has to resettle entire townships. Although Germany has a long history of coal mines and the hard coal (bituminous and anthracite coal) used to be mined with underground mining methods, at present only eight hard coal mines are in operation in Germany with underground mining methods (mainly in Ruhr of NRW and lower Saxony), down from more than 100 underground mines at the industrial peak in the 1950s. The last of these underground mines is set to close by 2018. At present the average production cost of hard coal per tonne from underground mines is approximately 165 Euro when the sales price is around 6-65 Euro per tonne. The government is been providing subsidies for the underground mines so far but after spending more than US$200 billion in subsidies since the 1960s, the German federal government this year decided that the practice had become unaffordable. The 2018 sunset for the hard coal industry was set with 32,000 miners left with these mines.

Groundwater Lowering

Interference by mining operations goes even deeper: to ensure safe mining, groundwater table must be lowered to below the deepest point in the opencast mine. For this purpose, some 550 million cubic meters of water must be removed from more than 1,400 wells every year.

RWE Power limits the consequences of such drainage for Nature to the absolute minimum. This is done by removing only as much water as is essential and by percolating treated sump water into the soil of wetlands and by discharging it into streams. This allows to stabilize today‘s groundwater level in wetlands worthy of protection located in river meadows or hollows and to maintain the ecological structure, value and qualities.

Outside these areas, lowering the groundwater has no effect on vegetation anyhow. The loess stores the water like a sponge, and the plants survive on precipitation. This is evidenced not only by the healthy old forests along the rim of the opencast mines, but also by the landscapes in the drainage area that are intact both ecologically and in their water economy. Drinking and industrial water, too, for people and companies is ensured in the long term. Technical authorities and RWE Power have a clear picture of the region‘s water balance. The measuring data of the groundwater wells are radioed to central offices and continuously evaluated by computer together with the water levels of the control gauge – an effort that would be hardly feasible without such assistance in view of the many millions of readings.

Mining & Materials Handling Technology

In the opencast mines, the bucket wheel excavators start by stripping the topsoil, the fertile loess clay, and then dig the so-called overburden: clay, gravel and sand. The biggest excavators are 96 meters high, 240 meters long and weigh some 12,840 tonnes – and are operated by four to five men.

Conveyor belts or trains deliver the coal to the power plants and upgrading operations in the mining area; there, it is used to generate electricity or further processed to make solid fuels and filter coke. Loess and overburden, too, are transported by belt or rail. They are distributed in those sections of an opencast mine where the coal has already been extracted: there, spreaders stack the material. Immediately afterwards, recultivation starts, i.e. designing and shaping the new landscape.

Process Optimization

With the development of the Hambach open-cast mine in 1978, mining technology reached today‘s dimensions: the first bucket wheel excavators with a daily output of 240,000 bank cubic meters of overburden and coal were commissioned.

Opencast mining technology reached its maximum here, but not its optimum: ever since, engineers and technicians have been steadily improving the extraction process. In doing so, they are pursuing two main goals: first, with the lowest possible outlays for personnel, maintenance and energy, they wish to achieve the highest productivity in the core process, viz. “mass transportation of coal and overburden“. Second, they wish to systematically and continuously monitor and ensure the quality of the coal on its entire route from deposit to power plant. The casual visitor will notice nothing of these initiatives in the bucket wheel excavators. This precision work is largely a matter of electronics, although it also has a deep impact on the organization of an opencast mine.

Optimizing extraction – that does not mean maximum output at any cost: that would wear out the equipment too quickly, for example, and unacceptably increase the risk of disruptions and, hence, loss of output. What matters in fact is that the entire extraction system of excavator plus conveyor belt plus spreader operates at a continuous high level, as sparingly as possible and, hence, glitch-free. This requires ultra-modern process and control technology. And that means, for example: being able to dose the speed of the bucket wheel in such a way that the conveyor belts, depending on their state, have to carry enough, though not too much coal and overbur opencast mining and technology den; to monitor coal quality using a deposit ﬁle, GPS and online measuring equipment, so that, at the end of the transport route, each power plant boiler receives the coal type tailored to its needs; and to reduce the slip that is a drain on energy and material when the conveyor belts are started up. Raising productivity also means, e.g., perhaps keeping a slightly battered spreader going at just 80 percent of its target performance until its repair ﬁts optimally into the standstill plan.

This development has two main consequences: those in charge of opencast-mine planning, production and maintenance need more information about current operating states than in the past. This calls for a lot of electronics for measuring, data transmission and evaluations. In addition, RWE Power has aligned the organization of its opencast mines to its operating equipment and processes, and no longer to the occupations and functions of the staff involved. Excavator operatives, for example, work together with ﬁtters and electricians in charge of excavator maintenance in one department. This simpliﬁes collaboration between specialists, shortens decision-taking routes and strengthens a team‘s own sense of responsibility. The hierarchies in the new organization, too, are much ﬂatter than they used to be.

Recultivation & Environmental Protection

Another essential aim in opencast-mine operations is the cultivation of good neighborly relations with people living in the adjacent townships. They are to be spared as far as possible any unacceptable dust and noise nuisance. Constant checks by the supervisory authorities and a plethora of measures ensure that both the provisions of statute and limit values are demonstrably adhered to.

To combat dust, for instance, exposed overburden and coal surfaces are kept moist by movable sprinkler systems. More permanent surfaces and embankments are solidiﬁed by sowing lawn seed, by planting or by covering them with compost. Where dust could emerge near large-scale equipment, drive stations and conveyor belts, the RWE installs dust-combating hoods and use sprinklers. Spraying masts on sections of the opencast-mine rim close to towns produce water screens to intercept any dust raised close to the ground.

In lowering alveolar-dust emissions, three measures are to the fore: cleaning the conveyor belts in the area of the belt junctions, use of extra-ﬁne spray mist systems in the coal bunker and costly cleaning of trafﬁc routes and vehicles.

Opencast Mining & Technology

To suppress noise, many motors and drives in opencast-mine equipment are sound-insulated. The travel gears of the huge units are lavishly lubricated. The belts have fewer idlers and, hence, fewer potential sources of noise. Defective idlers are replaced. Night-time transportation of large-scale equipment is avoided wherever possible. At the planning stage already, specialists establish the noise levels to be expected so that effective protection can be factored in early on.

Recultivation is evolving along similarly progressive lines. Planning for the shape to be given to former mine surfaces is a joint effort of specialist authorities, the municipalities concerned, agriculture, forestry and RWE Power experts. They register their various interests, which must then be reconciled by the approval authorities. RWE Power translates the plans into reality.

So far, Rhenish lignite mining has used 290 square kilometers of land. To date, 200 square kilometers have been rehabilitated, including 103 for agriculture and a good 77 as forest. Another 12 square kilometers is accounted for by residential areas and trafﬁc routes, among other things. The new lakes and ponds make up about 8 square kilometers.

In this respect, recultivation is not an attempt to re-build Nature. Man can only provide start-up aid. Most of the work is done by Nature herself. Rhenish recultivation is considered exemplary among specialists worldwide. One example is the relocation of a 5-km-long stretch of the Inde river in Düren County. The excavators of the Inden opencast mine have reached the river bed this year. This is after the river was given a new 12-km-long bed on the rear side of the mine, which is depleted and already backﬁlled. Owing to the low gradient of the river, this is considered an engineering feat; above all, however, the landscape planners, operating against a back-drop of practical necessities, have been given an opportunity to create better bases for conservation and biodiversity protection: the river can now unfold in a wide meadow surrounded by woodland.

In this way, the landscape will soon present a natural and varied picture. There will be undercutting and sedimentation, sand banks and bluffs. In addition, planning calls for large wild meadows, ﬂat bank zones and alternately and permanently humid areas. They will not only offer new habitats for ﬂora and fauna, but also be useful in ﬂood protection, acting as ﬂood-plains.

For many years now, scientists at German universities and the recultivation experts at RWE Power have been engaged in close cooperation.

One outer sign of this cooperation is the recultivation research center that the company has set up at a former farm near Jüchen-Hack-hausen. RWE Power makes this available to scientists not only as a library and laboratory, but also as a port of call for ﬁeld studies and as a venue for conferences. Recultivation research pursues three aims: the ﬁrst is to document the evolution of the new landscape areas and show where a helping and supporting hand should be lent. The second is to scrutinize ecological efficacy. One study showed, for example, that the dumping method normally used today without leveling increases later biodiversity in forests and promotes the growth of important tree species. In a third aim, the research supplies ideas for improving recultivation – in the interest of farmers, say, who cultivate crops on the new land in a sustainable and, wherever possible, soil-sparing manner, but also in the interest of ecology: today, RWE Power grows plants from the seeds of an old forest, thus retaining genetic variety, or biodiversity. Despite all the successes, though, recultivation remains a learning curve; RWE Power continues to move along it.

Further Technological Developments

Further progress is apparent in the electricity supply area, for example. The connecting cables of the bucket wheel excavators, which used to be as thick as an arm, can now be made 30 percent thinner and 30 percent lighter. While the cross section of the cores remains the same, the insulation can be thinner thanks to new materials. The result: the excavators will wind up 30 percent more cable in future. That lowers the number of costly connection moves in relocations inside an opencast mine and saves a lot of money. New materials also make the teeth of the excavator buckets harder and more durable. They can extend the operating life of these wearing parts three-fold and, hence, help increase the cost-effectiveness of the entire system.

Competence based on experience no longer suffices today to secure a company‘s future viability. Only a life-long learning enterprise can hold its own in a competitive and dynamic socio-political environment. So RWE Power will not only follow the state of the art, but actively help shape it.

More Power From Coal

Since the start of 2006, RWE Power has been building two new lignite-fired power plant units with optimized plant technology (BoA) at Neurath location. Following the original BoA unit, commissioned at Niederaußem in 2003, these units will be nos. 2 and 3 of this most advanced design worldwide.

“Optimized plant technology” means engineers have scored efficiency gains at many points in the power plant process by using high-tech materials and computer-modeled turbine blades, for example, and by recycling residual heat and reducing auxiliary power requirements. In this way the engineers have stepped up efficiency by almost one third. For cars this would mean more kilometers per liter of petrol. In the power plant it means: more power per ton of lignite.

Annually, the new BoA power plant will emit up to six million tonnes of CO2 less than the old plants being are replaced by BoA 2&3. This too is a result of improved efficiency with less lignite being needed in future to produce one kilowatt hour of electricity. The fossil energy sources hard coal and lignite, with their long-term availability and favorable price, and faced with the growing world demand for energy, will remain a crucial pillar in power generation and even gain in importance.

Parallel action is needed to cope with climate change. RWE’s road towards CO2 reductions in fossil-based power generation has two tracks: First, new power plants with higher efficiencies, which means lower emissions and, hence, savings in CO2; second, there is CO2 capture and storage.

RWE is active on both tracks. BoA 2&3 at Neurath will be a milestone on the road to climate protection.

Investment in Future

RWE Power is investing 2.2 billion euros in the BoA project at Grevenbroich-Neurath. In summer 2005, the company began preparing the construction site, which measures over 30 hectares. Actual construction work started in January 2006 and will last for around four years. The project secures thousands of jobs at RWE Power and at supplier firms and service providers in the region.

Moreover, at the height of construction, up to 4,000 people will be working on the site. Today already, BoA 2&3 form a reference project in Germany’s plant construction industry.

As an export product, BoA technology could contribute not only to climate protection in other countries but also secure numerous jobs in the German power plant construction sector.

New Technologies

At the same time, RWE Power is working on the next generation of lignite-fired power plants, which are expected to boast all of four percentage points more in the way of efficiency. To do so, they work with dry and not – like all of today's stations – with raw lignite.

RWE Power is perfecting the drying technique required for this purpose in a plant for so-called fluidized-bed drying with internal waste heat utilization (WTA) which is being erected next to the Niederaussem BoA unit, starting in 2006. It is to be installed upstream of the BoA unit and, after the end of 2007, will help save 20 to 30 percent of the otherwise needed raw lignite. This will trial the technology for the first time in an interaction with a large-scale power plant.

RWE Power will be investing some € 50 million in the project. With the Niederaussem plant, the Company wishes to demonstrate that WTA drying in continuous operations will prove itself both technically and financially in generating electricity from lignite. WTA is a proprietary development of RWE Power. Since 1993, it has been trialed on a much smaller scale and steadily optimized on the terrain of the Frechen factory.

The RWE Power is also involved in the development of a hard coal-fired power plant of the latest generation. Together with partners from industry and science, the company has worked on a study commissioned by the state of North Rhine- Westphalia concerning a so-called reference power plant, i.e. a model station. With the decision to build a hard coal-based twin unit at the Westfalen power plant location in Hamm, RWE Power will be implementing an appropriate technology. The plant will achieve an efficiency of 46 percent, the worldwide average being 30 percent.

In addition, RWE Power is engaged in a series of further research projects: at the hard coal-fired power plant Scholven, a system is being built to test all important boiler components and the turbine control valve that withstand the highest temperatures. In the steam generators of the power plants Esbjerg (DK, hard coal) and Weisweiler (D, lignite), test facilities have been installed in which superheater tubes are being trialled to check their powers of resistance under real conditions. So far, the highest main-steam temperatures are around 600 °C.

The COMTES- 700 project is researching materials and weld joints that are designed to withstand temperatures of 700°C. Higher temperatures are one road to even higher efficiencies in coal-based power generation. One further issue to be clarified is whether such power plants can work profitably.
Power Plants of Future
The fossil energy sources hard coal and lignite, thanks to their availability and relatively low price and in view of growing world energy needs, will remain indispensable for power generation, and even gain in importance. This is the assumption of all prominent energy scientists.

Against this background, though, industrialized countries in particular must not lose sight of the need for climate protection and must come up with long-term strategies for reducing CO2.

RWE, on the road toward lowering CO2 levels in the generation of electricity from fossil energy sources, is pursuing three development lines: first, an increase in the efficiency of its power plants, which means lower emissions per kilowatt hour of electricity produced and, hence, savings in greenhouse gases; second, the construction of the world's first zero-CO2 power plant with integrated coal gasification, complete CO2 capture and storage; third, retrofitting existing modern plants with technologies for CO2 capture.

What Bangladesh Can Learn

The visit to German coalmines gave us the impression that there is a lot that Bangladesh can learn from German experience in maximum utilization of coal resources through maintaining environmental balance, efficiently handling human displacements, agricultural land replacement and maintaining political soundness.

The NRW area is an ideal case study for Bangladesh because it is densely populated with 529 people living in each square kilometer area, while it’s 700 in Phulbari and in original mining area it’s less. Till now 196 square km area of NRW has already been mined and completely reclaimed.

Unlike Bangladesh and many other countries, mining in Germany is based on sensible politics and a vision to ensure benefit for its people and entrepreneurs, and minimize environmental hazards. A mining company cannot just do whatever it wishes but when it has a government nod, its mining plan cannot be hindered.

Germany's vast "lignite" coal mines are mainly located in agricultural lands and villages near Cologne, and therefore, the mining companies work with the government and communities to ensure fair resettlement and compensation.

Resistance was also not uncommon in Germany. Ten percent of the locals resisted resettlement. But relevant German laws demand that individuals must give up their lands for the greater benefit of the nation. Therefore, they lost legal battles and had to settle with their compensation.

The most interesting aspect of such a mining region is that it is one of the most populated areas in Germany, which can be an example for Bangladesh where presence of community is a big political issue in considering mining schemes.

The RWE is granted license to mine in a certain area and it has to acquire the land that belongs to private citizens or the government. Accordingly, RWE acquires agricultural areas and villages for certain period of time. The communities are given new areas and homes to live in, preferably within 10 to 20 km of their original homes. The government and communities are closely involved in this phase.

After it completes mining in that area, it must scientifically fill up most part of the void so that the land becomes arable again. Restoration of agricultural land and forest undergoes a process lasting several years to ensure that the fertility level has reached its original state. Part of a mined area will always have a void because the miners take away huge quantities of coal. This void is scientifically turned into lakes which the public can access as recreation and sports facilities.

We have seen one of such residual lake which is 25 km2 big and 150 meters deep. People found it as one of the most attractive recreation locations for swimming, water sporting, fishing and for using it as water retention area in NRW, close to Inden and Humbach mines.

Thus Germany sets the example of how large-scale open-pit mining can be done by simultaneously protecting environmental balance and communities.

On the other hand, it’s also an example as to how a company is held responsible to fulfill pledges. The vast open-cast mining areas, where miners have completed mining and filled up 300 to 400 meter voids with soil, have now been converted into deep forests and agricultural lands.

As many people in Bangladesh fear that open pit coal mining will inflict disasters on a densely populated and agro-based country like Bangladesh, Germany's coalmines demonstrate that intelligent mining can protect all interests while producing coal in such huge quantities that can drastically improve the economy.

The RWE’s three mines are annually producing 100 million tonnes of lignite coal against a total proven reserve of 3.8 billion tonnes in the NRW area. More than 90 percent of this coal can be extracted in the open pit method of mining, which is in a sharp contrast with the fact that coal extraction can be as low as 6 percent of it in an underground mine like Barapukuria in Bangladesh in its 30-year lifetime.

Because of the open pit system of mining, which allows maximum extraction of coal reserves, the generating cost of RWE's lignite-fired power is less than euro 1 cent, says RWE BOA Power Plant's executive Egbert Reinartz.

Apart from economic factors, there are human and environmental factors in judging whether open pit mines are better than underground mines.

"There had not been one instance of fatality in the last 30 years in these mines," says RWE's senior hydro-geologist Dr Thomas Von Schwarzenberg. "There had been accidents but not deaths."

In contrast, official figure of death in underground mines of China last year was 5,000 and unofficially death figure is said to be 20,000 a year. Even on August 1, 67 miners died in China. The Barapukuria mine so far witnessed several deaths though it is not operating in full scale.

Ruediger Durchholz, RWE's Mining Engineer, pointed out some of the major issues of mining that need constant attention -- noise, dust, groundwater, reclamation of land and resettlement of communities. The mining company strictly maintains dust and noise prevention measures. A monitoring group, other than the government, keeps an eye on the mining activities.

"When there is a resettlement issue, a villager becomes concerned at the loss of properties, unclear future and familiarization at new locations. We ask the affected people to be involved in the designing of their new homes in new locations. They are given higher payments for their old homes," Durchholz noted.

We visited villages that have been evacuated for mine development and newly built villages occupied by the affected people in the NRW area. The adjacent reclaimed vast agricultural land mainly grows beet and vegetables. The reclaimed dense forest areas are now homes to deer, jackals and rabbits, making it hard to believe that these areas were coal mines only a couple of decades back.

As managing underground water reservoirs while mining plays the most crucial role in the protection of environment and agriculture, it gets high priority in mining in Germany. The RWE systematically pumps out 550 million cubic meters of water from underground at places where it would start open-pit mining in the near future.

The pump out ensures a clean and safe mining--but it also makes the land so dry that the nearby underground water tables start depleting. It can hurt agriculture and drinking water. That is why the RWE does not waste this water like the Barapukuria which pump out 22 million cubic meters of water annually and waste it entirely in the most polluted form. Consequently the villagers around the Barapukuria mine area are deprived of fresh drinking and irrigation water.

The RWE annually pumps back 50 million cubic meters of water back into the underground-water reservoir through simple, cheap and effective infiltration wells. This ensures that the ground water table is not depleted in a way that nature cannot adequately replenish with water. The farmlands are happy and the nature in the mining area is bustling with trees.

The RWE also supplies 40 million cubic meters of water annually to the communities in the 282sqkm North Rhine Westfalia (NRW) coal mining zone of Germany, sends another 60mcm water to the highly-sensitive local wetlands, 170mcm to the power plants that generate 11,000 megawatt (MW) power and the remaining to the lakes and the local rivers.

With the RWE the consultant company for the Asia Energy for handling Phulbari project's most sensitive area--water tables, the proposal is pumping out 180mcm of water annually in Phulbari to produce 15 million tonnes of coal (Barapukuria mine is producing only half a million tonnes of coal); one third of it will be pumped back into the ground, one third to 1,000 MW power plant and the rest for serving the community.

"The RWE now has 20 to 30 years of experience of de-watering. The idea of de-watering came after the 50's with the advent of technology and mining needs," says RWE's senior hydro-geologist Dr Thomas Von Schwarzenberg. "We have invested 60 million Euros for installing 1,400 wells and we have spent 120 million Euros for their operation. The cost of this water comes at 0.18 cents per cubic meter," he said.

Schwarzenberg notes that the company is legally bound to protect the local wetland, which is located at least 20km off any of the mines. The RWE not only pumps water to this wetland directly, but it must also pump in water underground to keep the water tables healthy enough.

A monitoring group measures the water level of the wetland. If it detects a drop in the water level by even a few millimeters, the RWE must act instantly.

The RWE hydro-geologist showed visiting Bangladeshi journalists how water is pumped back into the underground reservoir using simple yet intelligent technology--infiltration wells and ditches.

The topsoil of the land that grows trees retains water. As a result rainwater cannot recharge a depleting sub-soil water level. Similarly, the topsoil retains river water or ponds. Beneath this level of soil is the sand and silt zone, which easily absorbs water and sends it to the water reservoir beneath.

The RWE's infiltration wells are dug like a traditional well through this topsoil, which may be typically 20-30 feet deep. Once the well hits the sand zone, it fills up the well with sand. When water is poured, this sand absorbs it instantly and sends it to the sub-soil water reservoir. Schwarzenberg showed that such a well could pump in millions of cubic meters of water every year.

The geologist who had visited the Barapukuria coalmine area in the recent past notes, "The Barapukuria water tables can be recharged easily by making such infiltration trenches. This method can also greatly help fast recharging Dhaka's water tables during the rainy seasons.”

Coal Politics

In Bangladesh, coal has now become a hot political topic. Instead of economic and scientific aspects, the issue is emerging as an emotional debate. Experts said there must be politics in every national issue, but all should consider the economic benefits of the nation as well as accept the best scientific option.

The previous government could not take any pragmatic decision. Rather due to its lackluster attitude, we witnessed another bloodshed after Kansat, which is most unfortunate in the history of Bangladesh’s energy sector development. Several people had to lay their lives to protect their own lands and homes although it was the government’s responsibility to make them understand the benefit both for them and the nation if the coalmine is developed in Phulbari.