Coal: Imports

(asked on 22nd June 2015) - View Source

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, pursuant to the Answer of 1 June 2015 to Question 610, what amount of coal has been imported to the UK from each country in each of the last 10 years.


Answered by
Andrea Leadsom Portrait
Andrea Leadsom
This question was answered on 26th June 2015

Nearly 90 per cent of all coal imported to the UK is steam coal, therefore figures for this type of coal are provided.

In the past ten years, over 90 per cent of UK steam coal imports originated from four countries: Russia, Colombia, the USA, and South Africa. Nearly half (49 per cent) of all coal imports in this period came from Russia. The table below gives UK steam coal imports by country from 2005 to 2014 in thousand tonnes:

Country of Origin

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Russia

16,888

22,543

20,185

21,193

18,414

9,166

12,093

17,459

19,177

15,831

Colombia

3,369

3,883

3,842

5,294

5,233

6,236

8,010

11,749

11,388

9,269

USA

266

707

1,121

2,792

3,112

2,349

4,461

8,858

9,528

7,687

EU (1)

1,001

1,584

482

933

1,136

881

1,056

583

1,111

690

South Africa

12,862

12,746

7,941

4,249

3,034

763

647

546

478

129

Other Countries

2,845

2,146

2,175

2,920

1,865

356

205

425

1,313

569

Total all countries

37,230

43,609

35,746

37,382

32,794

19,751

26,472

39,619

42,995

34,174

(1) European Union includes non-EU routed through the Netherlands.

Source: Energy Trends table 2.4 available at

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/solid-fuels-and-derived-gases-section-2-energy-trends.

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