In the European Union, coal is making a comeback, from Spain to Poland, home to one of the biggest strip mines in the world.
Spain has become a leader in the storage of carbon dioxide emissions from coal. In the Asturias region in the northern part of the country, researchers are attempting to inject CO2 back into coal and then extract or eject it as usable methane gas.
The Germans, while investing heavily in renewable energy sources, are depending more and more on coal for the production of electricity, 42 percent of the country's needs, at a time when nuclear power plants are being phased out.
All in all, coal-powered generators produce 25 percent of electricity in the European Union, that figure rising to 87 percent in Poland.
The Poles, with coal resources to see them through the next half-century, prefer their energy independence to buying cleaner natural gas from Russia. With memories still fresh of Soviet domination, they are ready and willing to put up with the pollution from their giant open-air mine, in Belchatow in south-central Poland, and its adjoining power station, which produces 40 million tons of greenhouse gasses per year.
The French, on the other hand, have largely rejected coal and its byproducts. Coal-powered generators produce a mere 4 percent of the country's electricity, and, for the moment, fracking is not authorized.
In northern France, in the Nord-Pas de Calais region, once the heart of the country's mining industry, there is, however, some interest in extracting coal bed methane as a replacement for conventional natural gas, despite local protests that the reserves are too small and the price of drilling too high.
In this region, one of the poorest of France, where unemployment hovers around 14 percent, mayors would like to see the money invested to improve housing and attract "clean" industries.
They also fear that methane extraction could very well be a first step towards the legalization of fracking, and consider the non-conventional drilling of coal bed methane a threat to local water supplies because of the wastewater it produces.
Although suspicious of coal today, the French have carefully and lovingly preserved their mining past.
In 2012, the Nord-Pas de Calais coal mining region in the far northeastern corner of France was chosen to be part of the World Heritage List of UNESCO for its "remarkable cultural landscape, the result of almost 300 years of coal mining and the technological and urban developments associated with the mining industry."
In an area stretching across about 75 miles, in a "living" museum, implanted in a landscape where people work and live, former mines have been turned into theaters, eco-museums and art galleries. Culm banks (called "terrils" in French), some rising to an elevation of more than 700 feet, can be explored along graded hiking paths.
At the heart of the region, on the site of a former mine in the city of Lens, the Louvre, one of the world's great museums, inaugurated a new extension in December 2012.
There visitors can view a rotating collection of art from the Louvre in Paris, including a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci (although not the Mona Lisa - she never moves!), monumental Greek statues, and pottery and porcelain from Turkey and Iran.
Imagine such treasures, exhibited for free and on a daily basis in Pottsville or Hazleton and you'll have an idea of what this museum means to the city of Lens and to inhabitants of the region.
The nearby town of Lewarde is home to France's biggest museum of mining, Centre historique minier du Nord-Pas de Calais, which will be hosting a special exhibit until June 2 devoted to "men and machines," tracing almost 300 years of mining technology.
The site of the museum is a former mine, the Delloye "fosse" or "pit," and visitors, much like at The Pioneer Tunnel Coal Mine & Steam Train in Ashland, can explore its underground tunnels. They can also visit the building where coal was sorted by "galibots," the French word for "breaker boys," and by women, who also worked in the mines.
The extensive complex of red-brick buildings and underground installations that is home to the museum includes several permanent exhibits: one documents the formation of coal over millions of years, another is devoted to daily life in the mines and includes visits to shower and dressing rooms as well as to the room where mining lamps were stored, another tells the story of the role of horses in the mines, still another explores energy resources past, present and future.
An important place is also reserved for the testimonies of those who worked in the mines. From them, visitors can learn about the first day on the job, the dangers miners encountered underground and their life at home and at the local bar or "estaminet," where, at the end of the day, they shared a drink with their buddies.
Throughout the region, just like in Schuylkill County, there are company towns (known as "corons"), still inhabited today. The houses that compose them are built in all shapes and sizes, although nearly all are made of brick. These homes, inhabited by miners or their children, are also a part of the "living museum" of Nord-Pas de Calais.
As for coal's future, although it plays only a minor role in France's energy production today, there are stirrings here and there that seem to indicate things may soon change. In February, Arnaud Montebourg, Minister of Industry, made a plea for "le gaz made in France," referring to the potential for extracting France's resources in coal bed methane.
Along with other Europeans, the French also look on with wonder and envy when they hear reports that the United States, thanks in part to shale, may begin exporting oil and gas by 2025 and possibly achieve energy independence by 2030. Considering those predictions, even the most hard-core opponents to fracking and fossil fuels might begin to have second thoughts.
Yet, predictions remain just that, predictions, not facts. And the "Halliburton loophole" of the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005, which exempts fracking from certain requirements of the "Safe Drinking Water Act," may already be depriving future generations of safe water to drink, which, if proven true, would raise the cost of energy independence beyond what anyone can afford.
(Honicker can be reached at honicker.republicanherald @gmail.com)