A Ukrainian coal miner waits for a bus after finishing his shift in a coal mine outside Donetsk, Ukraine, on May 20, 2014. While coal consumption has dropped in Europe and North America in recent years, it has risen sharply in Asia. #

The bucket-wheel of a giant excavator removes the first layer of soil for the expansion of the nearby Welzow open-pit lignite coal mine on August 20, 2010 near Drebkau, Germany. The area of northern Saxony and southern Brandenburg is scarred with active and former mines, and a large-scale project was underway to flood the massive pits and convert them into lakes for tourism. #

Coke emerges from a coke furnace in operation at the Xian Coking Factory which was shut down during a campaign to reduce air pollution in 2007 in Shaanxi Province, China. The factory emits about 300 million cubic meters of exhaust gas every year. #

Explosives are detonated at an A & G Coal Corporation surface mining operation in the Appalachian Mountains on April 16, 2012 in Wise County, Virginia. Critics refer to this type of mining as "mountaintop removal mining" which has destroyed 500 mountain peaks and at least 1,200 miles of streams while leading to increased flooding. #

A miner holds a piece of coal outside an unregulated coal mine in Sabinas, Mexico, on January 15, 2013. Everyday, thousands of miners go to work in the unregulated coals mines of northern Mexico knowing they may not return. Facing death on a daily basis has become a fact of life for these men as they struggle to scrape out a living in an environment bereft of rules and regulations, lacking even the most basic equipment. #

In this photograph taken on January 29, 2013, Indian coal miner Surya Limu (inside hole), squats with other miners by a fire to keep warm hours before dawn, inside the face of a 50 meter deep shaft in Rymbai village in the northeastern state of Meghalaya, India. #

A crane lifts miners out of a 300ft deep mine shaft, as they head out for their lunch break on April 13, 2011 near the village of Latyrke near Lad Rymbai, in the district of Jaintia Hills, India. In the Jaintia hills, located in India's far North East state of Meghalaya, miners descend to great depths on slippery, rickety wooden ladders. #

22 year old Shyam Rai from Nepal pauses as he works, digging out coal, using hands and a pick to get at the seams of coal that lay 300 ft below the surface at a coal mine on April 13, 2011 in the Jaintia Hills, India. Children and adults squeeze into rat-hole like tunnels in thousands of privately owned and unregulated mines, extracting coal with their hands or primitive tools and no safety equipment. Workers can earn as much as 150 USD per week or 30,000 Rupees per month, significantly higher than the national average of 15 USD per day. #

38 year old Prabhat Sinha, from Assam, carries a load of coal weighing 60kg, supported by a head-strap, as he ascends the staircase of a coal mine on April 16, 2011 near the village of Khliehriat, India. After traversing treacherous mountain roads, the coal is delivered to neighboring Bangladesh and to Assam from where it is distributed all over India, to be used primarily for power generation and as a source of fuel in cement plants. #

A miner bends over a wooden crate to empty the basket strapped to his back filled with about 60-70 kilos of wet coal after exiting a deep coal mine shaft near Rimbay village in the Indian northeastern state of Meghalaya. Accidents and quiet burials are commonplace, with years of uncontrolled drilling making the mines unstable and liable to collapse at any moment. #

A train is loaded with coal at the Borodinsky opencast colliery, near the Siberian town of Borodino, some 152 km (94 mi) east of Krasnoyarsk, on November 15, 2012. The Borodinsky colliery is the biggest opencast coal mine in Russia - 7 km (4 miles) long and 100 meters (328 feet) deep - was built from 1945 to 1949 by Gulag prisoners to produce about 20 million tons of coal a year now. #

Thirty-one coal cars sit mangled after derailing and slamming into a house near Baltimore, Ohio, on May 10, 1998. A couple and their dog escaped just moments before the Conrail coal train derailed and slammed into their house, knocking it six feet off its foundation. #

Bucket excavators stand illuminated at the snow-covered Vereinigtes Schleenhain open-pit coal mine on January 25, 2013 near Deutzen, Germany. The mine, which is operated by Mibrag, is one of several across eastern Germany that produce lignite coal for local electricity production. #

This aerial photo shows the United Bulk Terminals in Devant, Louisiana, on February 18, 2014. Three environmental groups claim in a federal lawsuit that the coal terminal, south of New Orleans, is polluting the Mississippi River. #

View of the Boxberg lignite-fired power station and the Nochten open pit lignite (brown coal) mine (below) taken on January 14, 2011. The plant is run by Swedish energy giant Vattenfall. #

A boy looks out over an open-cast coal mine as the glowing embers of an underground coal fire are seen below in the village of Guhanwadi on February 11, 2012 near Jharia, India. Villagers in India's Eastern State of Jharkhand scavenge coal illegally from open-cast coal mines to earn a few dollars a day. Claiming that decades old underground burning coal seams threatened the homes of villagers, the government relocated over 2,300 families to towns like Belgaria. Villagers claim they were promised schools, hospitals and free utilities for two years, which they did not receive. #

A donkey carrying sacks of coal walks through the narrow tunnels of a coal mine, in Choa Saidan Shah in Punjab province, Pakistan, on April 29, 2014. Coal miners in Chao Saidan Shah use donkeys to transport coal from the depths of the mines to the surface. The donkeys make around 20 trips per day carrying sacks weighing about 20 kg (44 lbs) each. The work is dangerous with the constant risk of cave-ins. The miners say they do what they can to care for the animals, with their limited resources, but the difficult conditions mean the donkeys' life expectancy is 12-13 years. #

A worker moves coal briquettes onto a pedicab at a coal distribution business in Huaibei, central China's Anhui province, on January 30, 2013. Environmental concerns -- particularly over the use of coal -- were pushed to the top of the agenda after much of the country was covered with a blanket of pollution in early 2013. #