Energy management

Coal seam methane, followed by electricity and diesel, are the dominant contributors to Coal & Allied's emission profile.

Addressing coal seam methane requires adoption of new technologies, which are included in the designing for the future section of our Climate Change Action Plan.

Coal & Allied's energy management objective is to improve energy use at our operations, projects and in the supply chain, and to embed efficiency processes into our systems.

Our energy management programme is designed to address, understand, prioritise and reduce our energy use.  A major project is currently being implemented to meter electricity and fuel use of all equipment and facilities consuming at least 10 per cent of our energy.

In 2007, Coal & Allied's energy management programme achieved the following results:

• Coal & Allied sites saved almost 8,000 tonnes of CO₂ by using two per cent biodiesel
• 370,000 litres of diesel and 980 tonnes of CO₂ was saved at Mount Thorley Warkworth through effective mine design focused at reducing haulage distances
• Nearly 600 tonnes of CO₂ was saved when process pumps were changed out with high efficiency variable speed drives at the Hunter Valley Operations coal handling and processing plant
• Installing timers and daylight sensors on lighting plants around Hunter Valley Operations and Mount Thorley Warkworth avoided producing more than 250 tonnes of CO₂.

Energy use

In 2007 we set voluntary targets for the amount of energy used to produce a tonne of product coal.  For Coal & Allied the target was 0.179 gigajoules (GJ) per tonne of product.

While a number of operations reduced their total energy use compared to 2006, energy use per tonne of product coal in 2007 was above target.  Coal & Allied operations used 0.249 GJ per tonne of product.

The amount of coal we produce is the major influence on the amount of energy we use and emissions we produce per tonne of product.  Our 2007 results were largely due to lower than planned coal production because of severe weather events as well as port and rail constraints. Our operations are designed to efficiently move large volumes of material and, therefore, decreased coal production does not generally result in decreased emissions per tonne of product, due to reduced economies of scale.

Greenhouse gas emissions

In 2007 we set voluntary targets for the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced per tonne of product coal.  For Coal & Allied the target was 86.4kg of greenhouse gas equivalents (CO2-eq) per tonne of product and for RTCA Queensland, 25.2kg of C02-eq per tonne of product. 

Compared to 2006, most of our operations reduced their total greenhouse gas emissions in 2007.  However, we only narrowly missed achieving our internal targets, set on a per tonne of product coal basis.  Coal & Allied operations produced 89.8kg of CO2 per tonne of product, missing their target by 4 per cent. Like energy use, these results were due to lower than planned coal production brought about by severe weather events as well as port and rail constraints.