A black look on coal

What makes Longyearbyen tick? Why can people live comfortably here, in large, warm houses, with good shops and even better restaurants? How can life standard be so high, for so many people, so close to the North Pole?

I´m afraid it´s the coal. Not only is Norway one of the world´s biggest providers of petroleum, it also earns a nice profit on exported coal from Svalbard. And some of the coal is kept back, to be used in Longyearbyen, to keep me and my family and everyone else here warm and snug.


I´ve heard that the local coal is a "pure" sort, that it doesn´t send so much carbon dioxide (CO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxide (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOC), mercury, arsenic, lead and cadmium (more about coal pollution here), as coal found other places. I don´t know whether this is correct, but it doesn´t make much difference to me. If not used in the power plant here, it will be burnt up somewhere else - and the gases will enter the atmosphere and add to the Greenhouse Effect.

So, in one way, I´m a bit ashamed that I´m here at all. It´s a great adventure for me and my family, but it probably would be better for the environment if we weren´t here - in fact, better that as few as possible of us humans were here.

And what would that mean? It would mean that we chose not to take out coal (losing profit), and that maybe only scientists were allowed to stay here over longer periods. AND it would mean that Norway would lose some important strategic points. It´s a badly kept secret that one of the main reasons for having such a large population living here has to do with sovereignty.

So it´ll never happen, will it? I´m pretty sure we´ll mine the coal of Svalbard as long as it benefits our dear selves.

One positive thing that has just started to happen is this: UNIS, together with Store Norske Spitsbergen Kullkompani and two oil companies, has initiated a project to see whether it will be possible to "trap" CO2 from the power plant in the ground. Here in Longyearbyen, they have started to drill a core hole down to 800-1000 meters, to see if they can find a layer of sandstone porous enough to deposit CO2 in. The sandstone must be covered by a layer of shale that´ll keep the gas down. If the conditions are right, and the technology for trapping CO2 can be developed, that´s certainly good news, not only for Svalbard, but for power plants oher places.

Beneath is a photo of the drilling site near Bykaia, next summer a second hole will be drilled in Adventdalen.


The vision is to make Longyearbyen CO2-free within at least 2025 - partly by trapping the CO2, but also by the help of alternative fuel for cars, scooters and boats. (More about all this here and here.)

So that´s a good thing - and hopefully it will make a difference. Maybe it can make a huge difference in - let´s say, China. That would be great!

But as for making Longyearbyen CO2-free, I still think that that would be obtained a lot quicker by shipping the population off to the mainland. Myself included.