My wife and I recently moved from London to a lovely old cottage in the countryside with electricity, no gas and a wood-burning stove. We are incrementally improving insulation to make the house more efficient but currently heat the house by burning wood that we bought from a local tree surgeon in the stove and using the woefully inefficient (and expensive) electric radiators. There is a coal bin outside where the previous tenants left a fair amount of coal. My question is, what should I do with the coal to be most ecologically sound?
My gut instinct is that to burn it would be bad as I am releasing all that fossilised CO2 from millions of years ago back into today's atmosphere. Should I bury it? Should I burn it because the electricity for the radiators is probably partly coming from coal-fired power stations anyway? Interested to hear what people think. Thanks.