Cumbrian Coal Mine - National Policy or Localism?

The first in an occasional series of articles on coal and fossil fuel policy that we aim to produce through 2021.

In March 2019 Cumbria County Council approved plans for a new £165 million deep coal mine.

This would aim, when it starts operations, to produce 2.43 million tonnes of metallurgical coking coal and 0.35 million tonnes of middlings coal (for burning), annually, for an anticipated 40-50 year period. On 6 January 2021, the UK Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick decided not to exercise his powers to ‘call in’ the application in order to decide it himself, instead leaving it to the local authority to make the final decision, and thereby in effect allowing it to proceed.

Metallurgical coal would be used in UK and potentially European steel making, for example at Port Talbot, Wales, and Scunthorpe, England. One argument in favour of this development has been that steelmaking operations would otherwise import metallurgical coal from the US, Canada, Russia and Australia. The local authority has gone as far as to argue that this could make the new mine “carbon neutral” by limiting the emissions associated with coal imports. The development might offer as many as 500 jobs when fully operational in an area of high unemployment, although committing more people to working underground in a coal mine would be a mixed blessing.

The arguments against this development are that licensing a new coal mine in this way runs contrary to everything that the UK is trying to do with the Presidency of COP26, as Co- Chair of the Powering Past Coal Alliance, with national legal commitments to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and a new commitment to achieve a 68% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 as part of the UK’s Nationally Determined Contribution to the goals of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

This seems to be a decision taken for local economic reasons that takes almost no account of the UK’s wider climate policies and can only work to undermine the authority of those trying to promote them.

The way that President Biden is seeking to promote his administration’s climate policies through all of its Cabinet appointments and departments seems a more effective approach. The UK is not alone in having unfinished business in integrating its climate policies into the rest of its programmes, so that climate is not just an issue for one Cabinet minister but one that concerns them all. Every country that has signed the Paris Agreement and still extracts or depends on fossil fuels has difficult choices to make on competing priorities. But the UK has assumed a leadership role for COP26, and needs to live up to it.

In a report for the Green Alliance in January 2020 “The case against new coal mines in the UK”, the authors wrote –

“We conclude that decarbonisation of the steel industry, and a phase out of coal use, is both necessary and possible, making the new coal mine in Cumbria unnecessary. In fact the new mine would hinder the development of low carbon alternatives to conventional steel production.

We argue for a more active industrial strategy to encourage low carbon jobs and investment in former mining and industrial areas. Finally, we make recommendations for the government to remove ambiguities surrounding its approach to fossil fuel extraction, and to stimulate investment in alternative sources of power.”

The UK has publicly committed to phase out the use of coal for power generation, and has urged other nations to follow its lead. On 20 January 2020, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson  told a UK-Africa Investment Summit that there would be no more direct aid, investment or trade credits for coal mining or power plants abroad, declaring that –

“We all breathe the same air, we live beneath the same sky and we all suffer when carbon emissions rise and the planet warms.”

The UK knows that if major coal fired power programmes go ahead as planned in countries such as India and China, the targets for emissions reduction set out in the Paris Agreement would simply be overwhelmed. That is why the UK is Co-Chair of the Powering Past Coal Alliance.  In June 2020, the UK government was urging the 34 national governments, 35 subnational governments and 44 major financial and other organisations that are members of that Alliance that there was a need to aggressively phase out coal finance, and -

“… under the United Kingdom’s COP26 Presidency, we have an opportunity to focus
our efforts and press for greater global ambition…

…This will be a year that is long remembered. Let us also make it a defining moment for coal phase-out and climate action.”

Greta Thunberg, commenting on the mine decision on Twitter on 8 January 2021 said that –

“This really shows the true meaning of so called “net zero 2050.” These vague, insufficient targets long into the future basically mean nothing today.”

We suggest that view is completely understandable, but does not have to be true. Net zero targets can have a real impact, but as Christiana Figueres has said, we also need interim targets and commitments and detailed plans to show how they will be addressed. As this decision shows, we also need short, medium and long term strategies on the future extraction of fossil fuels, and further integration of climate policies across all government departments, supported from the top.

Two teenage climate activists were reported to have gone on hunger strike to protest the new mine decision, although thankfully this action has now been suspended so as not to further burden our over-pressed hospitals. We would urge them not to damage their health, but to accept that that climate change is a massive and intractable problem that will require the skills, energy and commitment of all generations, disciplines and sectors of society, long after the signing ceremonies of COP26 are over and the posters and banners come down.

All signatories of the Paris Agreement, and particularly the Presidency of COP26, need to make domestic policy and practice consistent with their public rhetoric and commitments on climate.