Several coal resource maps for the whole of the UK have been produced by the British Geological Survey as a result of joint work with Department of Trade and Industry and the Coal Authority. The UK Coal Resource for new exploitation technologies map is a map of Britain depicting the spatial extent of the principal coal resources overlayed with existing workings and potential new technologies for accessing the resource. The map also shows the areas where coal and lignite are present at the surface and also where coal is buried at depth beneath younger rocks. The project covers all onshore coalfields in the UK, including Northern Ireland. It includes coal under estuaries and near-shore areas that can practically be reached by land-based directional drilling. No data more than 5 km offshore were considered. The maps are intended to be used for resource development, energy policy, strategic planning, land-use planning, the indication of hazard in mined areas, environment assessment and as a teaching aid. In addition to a summary map at 1:750000 scale for Britain data also exists for each technology of 21 individual regions or coal fields at a scale of 1:100000. The data was published in printed map form for the summary map, inkjet plots for the 42 individual maps and as PDF documents on CD. The maps were accompanied by BGS report CR/04/015N, "UK Coal Resource for New Technologies, Final Report". The work was initiated in April 2002 and completed in October 2003. The data was also simplified for inclusion in the Britain Beneath your Feet atlas 2005.
