Home-grown gas

sir – In view of the increasing belligerence of Russia towards the rest of Europe, perhaps the time has come for European countries to consider ways of reducing – or, better still, eliminating – their reliance on supplies of natural gas from Russia.

One way of doing this, given that there are plentiful reserves of coal, would be to revert to coal gasification. This involves heating coal in the absence of air to produce coal gas, consisting of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide, coke and a residue of industrially useful organic chemicals.

The hydrocarbons could then be used for domestic gas supplies. The remaining carbon monoxide – together with producer gas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide made by passing steam over white-hot coke – could be used for smokeless electricity generation and other industrial heating requirements. JJ Watson

Darlington, Co Durham