The life cycle phase of fossil fuel extraction is mainly considered in the life cycle assessment (LCA) when evaluating the energy production processes. It is then only one of many unit processes, which contribute to the blurring of mining-relevant results. There are few items in the literature focusing exclusively on the lignite mining phase and analysing the specific mining conditions and associated environmental impacts. The article focuses on the LCA of lignite mining processes on the basis of data coming from a Polish mine. The technology for opencast lignite mining is noted for its high production efficiency, high level of recovery and lower risk as regards the safety of workers when compared with underground mining systems. However, the need to remove large amounts of overburden to uncover the deposit contributes to a much greater degradation of the landscape. Analysing the results obtained, several key (hot spot) elements of the lignite mining operations were distinguished for modelling the environmental impact, i.e.: calorific value, the amount of electricity consumption, the manner in which waste and overburden are managed. As a result there is a high sensitivity of the final indicator to changes in these impacts.

在评估能源生产过程时，主要在生命周期评估 (LCA) 中考虑化石燃料开采的生命周期阶段。那么它只是许多单元过程中的一个，这会导致与挖掘相关的结果变得模糊。文献中很少有项目专门关注褐煤开采阶段并分析具体的开采条件和相关的环境影响。本文重点介绍了基于来自波兰矿山的数据的褐煤开采过程的 LCA。与地下采矿系统相比，露天褐煤开采技术以其生产效率高、回收率高和工人安全风险低而著称。然而，需要去除大量的覆盖层以发现沉积物，这导致了更大程度的景观退化。通过分析获得的结果，褐煤开采作业的几个关键（热点）要素被区分为对环境影响建模，即：热值、电力消耗量、废物和覆盖物的管理方式。因此，最终指标对这些影响的变化非常敏感。