Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Coal mine project tests UK ahead of key climate summit
WHITEHAVEN, England — In the patchwork of hills, lakes and sea that make up England’s northwest corner, most people see beauty. Dave Cradduck sees broken dreams.
The coal mine where the 74-year-old once worked has long closed. The chemical factory that employed thousands is gone. The nuclear power plant is being decommissioned.
To Cradduck, a plan for a new coal mine that could bring hundreds of jobs is a sign that “at least someone’s interested in the area.”
But environmentalists view the proposed mine with horror. They say it sends a disastrous message as the United Kingdom welcomes world leaders, advocates, diplomats and scientists to Glasgow, Scotland, for a United Nations Climate Change Conference that starts Sunday.
Many scientists and activists consider the two-week COP26 conference a last chance to nail down carbon-cutting promises that could keep global warming within manageable limits.
“The U.K. sets itself out as a leader, but it’s building a coal mine, which is the most polluting thing that you can do,” Rebecca Willis, a professor of energy and climate governance at Lancaster University, said. “It sends a signal to the rest of the world that the U.K. isn’t actually serious.”
The proposed deep mine symbolizes a dilemma facing the British government: It aims to generate all of the U.K.’s electricity from clean energy sources by 2035 and to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
But Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also pledged to boost prosperity in England’s neglected north with new factories, roads, railways and other infrastructure that environmentalists say is at odds with the government’s green agenda.
West Cumbria Mining, the company hoping to build Britain’s first deep coal mine in three decades, wants to extract coking coal — a type used to make steel rather than for fuel — from under the Irish Sea.
It plans to process the coal on the site of a shuttered chemical plant in Whitehaven, 340 miles northwest of London.
West Cumbria Mining says it will be the world’s first net-zero coal mine, with all of its carbon emissions reduced or offset by credits to the Gold Standard Foundation, an environmental organization.
Plans show curved modern buildings that blend in with the surrounding hills.
Alexander Greaves, a lawyer for the mining company, said while opening a new coal mine might look bad at first glance, the Cumbria County project aims to be different be design.
“Showing these mines can be made by law to capture greenhouse gas emissions and required to offset any residual impact is true environmental leadership,” he said.
Environmentalists scoff at that idea.
“It’s blindingly obvious that the quickest way to stop these carbon emissions and to make radical changes — which we have to do in the next 10 years — is to stop opening any new coal mines,” said Maggie Mason, a local opponent of the mine. “The same is true for oil wells and gas wells.”
In the North Atlantic, west of the Shetland islands, Shell and Siccar Point Energy plan to extract 170 million barrels of oil from the Cambo oilfield. Environmental groups are trying to force the British government to stop the drilling. Johnson’s administration is reluctant to intervene, saying “sources like Cambo are still required” to meet Britain’s energy needs as it shifts to a low-carbon economy.
“We need to transition our existing oil and gas sector to a decarbonized platform,” Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said last month in the House of Commons, accusing Cambo opponents of wanting “a complete eclipse” of the oil and gas industries “with 250,000 jobs vanishing overnight.”