underground coal gasification - are we doing this in the UK?

[prand]

I was listening to the radio the other day about our heroic government and their deal to sell China £1.4 billion worth of chickens and pigs, in return no doubt for first dibs on some knock off rolexes and poor quality electronic gadgets.

A part of this deal they were interviewing a man from a company leading an underground coal gasification joint venture to supply gas for the Chinese power stations. It sounds like a clean, non destructuve way of extracting the energy from coal without having to actually dig it up. Too good to be true?

I've always wondered if it was ever going to be possible or economic to start mining coal again in the UK, and it seems in recent times that it started to make sense.

So does anyone know if this is happening here in the UK? And if not, Why not? We need our own, cheap sources of energy!

Edit: Google says the UK Government has had some interest in this, but with various department mergers any prevous momentum seems to have disappeared. Although there are a few commercial people buying prospecting rights.

http://coal.decc.gov.uk/en/coal/cms/publications/m...

Edited by prand on Thursday 30th June 21:23

[f1dget]

It seems/seams that somebody is but I don't think its going down well!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1393033/Ma...

[SWH]

http://www.britishcoalgasification.co.uk/index.htm...