Europe is currently the world's biggest producer of lignite, the world's dirtiest coal, and the third-largest importer of the fossil fuel.
How about a bowl of Lignite Wonderland?
"We massively reduced our lignite production when the CO2 price was at its height," says Alfred Hoffmann, head of portfolio management in Scandinavia and Germany for Vattenfall, a Swedish power company.
Meanwhile, RWE, a German utility, is building a plant which will use the residual heat of its own flue gas to dry lignite before burning it.
Poland sits on Europe's largest coal reserves and produces about 90% of its electricity from hard coal and lignite.
Poland is the EU's largest lignite producer, and more than 80% of the electricity generated in the country comes from coal (see chart).
Less dense types, such as sub-bituminous and lignite coal, can contain up to 50% water.
More than 90% of the country's energy comes from coal or lignite.
In Germany, RWE, the biggest user of coal in Europe, generated 72% of its electricity from coal and lignite (a dirtier, low-grade form of coal) in the first nine months of 2012, compared with 66% over the same period in 2011.
Lignite or brown coal remain the cheapest way to produce power in Europe, but they are also by far the most polluting energy sources.
Three-quarters of the emissions come from producing and using energy, especially electricity, which is largely generated from coal, much of it dirty, brown lignite.
