Gove backs first deep coal mine for 30 years

Levelling Up Secretary approves Cumbria project after accepting fossil fuel is vital for UK steel industry

MICHAEL GOVE has approved the UK’S first deep coal mine in more than 30 years after conceding that new green technologies are unlikely to replace the fossil fuel’s role in steelmaking for many years.

The Levelling Up Secretary backed plans for a £165m coal mine in Cumbria in a decision that is expected to spark an immediate legal challenge from climate activists.

The Woodhouse Colliery, near Whitehaven, will produce coal for steelmaking in the UK and for export to Europe, employing about 500 workers at peak production.

But the project has been hugely controversial because of the impact of coalbased steel production on climate change. The Government’s top climate

adviser, Lord Deben, has previously warned that it would be “absolutely indefensible”.

The move comes a year after Alok Sharma, as president of the Cop26 climate conference hosted by the UK in November last year, said he wanted to “consign coal power to history”.

Justifying his decision last night, Mr Gove argued that the mine would have an “overall neutral effect on climate change” and the “likely amount of coal used in steelmaking would be broadly the same with or without the development of the proposed mine”.

Industry is developing alternatives to coal blast furnaces for steelmaking, such as using hydrogen or electric arc furnaces, but decision papers say Mr Gove believes there is “no certainty” on the contribution they will be able to make over the next 10 to 15 years.

A report by civil servants said: “The Secretary of State does not consider that there is a compelling case that hydrogen direct reduction will result in a significant reduction in the demand for coking coal over the next decade.”

The decision sparked an immediate pushback from climate campaigners, with Friends of the Earth saying it was considering legal options.

Tony Bosworth, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “This is an appalling decision. Approving this mine is a misguided and deeply damaging mistake that flies in the face of all the evidence. The mine isn’t needed, will add to global climate emissions, and won’t replace Russian coal.”

He claimed a decision last month to postpone an announcement on the mine looked like a “cynical ploy” to avoid embarrassing the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, at the Cop27 climate meeting in Egypt. Opponents plan to protest at the site of the mine on Saturday.

Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ environment spokesman and MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, said: “This decision cancels out all the progress Britain has made on renewable energy. The Government’s environmental credentials are yet again left in tatters.”

The project is being developed by West Cumbria Mining. According to planning documents, 80pc of the coal the mine will produce annually is forecast to be sent to an export terminal on England’s east coast after five years

The decision on the mine was originally approved by Cumbria County Council in October 2020 but was then called in by the Government amid concerns over the environmental impact.

A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesman said: “The Secretary of State has agreed to grant planning permission for a new metallurgical coal mine in Cumbria as recommended by the independent planning inspector.

“This coal will be used for the production of steel and would otherwise need to be imported. It will not be used for power generation. The mine seeks to be net zero in its operations and is expected to contribute to local employment and the wider economy.”

‘Britain’s energy strategy is an incoherent mess which is unlikely to ensure future supplies or succeed in fighting climate change.” No, not a recent description – but the conclusion of an international taskforce of scholars, high-level government and UN officials, and environmental experts, led by the former British governor of Hong Kong, Oxford University chancellor Lord Patten, in 2007.

Its report also warned about the dangers of relying too heavily on Russian gas supplies because of the Kremlin’s “apparent wish to use natural resources in the pursuit of political ends”.

Incredibly, a decade and a half later, the situation is worse, not better, exacerbated by chronic short-term thinking under successive governments – Conservative and Labour – before being plunged into total chaos by the conflicting forces of war in Ukraine and climate change, as political leaders around the globe find it increasingly difficult to reconcile energy security with ambitious net-zero commitments.

As Ed Miliband, the shadow climate change secretary, pointed out, Rishi Sunak had to be “dragged kicking and screaming” to the Cop27 environmental jamboree in November, only to claim the mantle of climate leadership when he got there. Never mind that the Government had just approved scores of new North Sea oil and gas exploration licenses, or that the Prime Minister had recently reaffirmed his support for a ban on onshore wind, or indeed that some elements of the Tory party had been pushing for a ban on the building of solar panels on farmland.

Yet surely nothing underlines the sheer madness of Britain’s energy policy more than Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove’s decision to give his blessing for the opening of the UK’S first new deep coal mine since the 1980s.

It is a monumental step backwards for a country whose Prime Minister called for a “global mission for clean growth” when he took to the stage to address world leaders at Cop27 in Sharm-el-sheikh.

The case for the Woodhouse Colliery, near Whitehaven, to be allowed to start production, isn’t just flimsy, it’s non-existent. This is hardly surprising. The energy debate has always been a veritable minefield of misinformation on both sides but the antirenewables lobby has lately been having a field day – literally.

First, opponents of solar farms wrongly claimed that they threatened the UK’S food production, before the same bogus argument was deployed by those against onshore wind. Then, in a new low for a government that has never allowed facts to get in the way of politics, Grant Shapps, the Business Secretary, declared that wind turbines are now “so big” they cannot be built on land. That will obviously come as a surprise to those currently in the process of building several onshore wind farms on the British isles, such as the Viking project in the Shetlands. Due for completion in 2024, the 443MW scheme is expected to be the most productive onshore wind farm ever built in the UK. But as Greenpeace felt compelled to highlight – “the point about onshore wind is that it is built onshore – on land”.

Climate change tsar Lord Deben has described the prospect of Woodhouse being given the green light as “another example of Britain saying one thing and doing another” but he makes an even more important point, which is that the mine simply isn’t needed.

The project is being cheered on by a clutch of Tory backbenchers on the basis that it will ease Britain’s reliance on overseas coal imports, including from hostile foreign regimes. The mine will produce coking coal for the steel industry, which last year imported 2.1m tonnes of coking coal, 40pc of which came from Russia.

Yet, these claims, as rousing as they might be in the current climate, simply don’t stand up to basic scrutiny. Eighty-five per cent of what comes out of the pit is expected to be exported, while there are serious doubts about domestic demand for the remaining 15pc.

British Steel, one of the country’s two primary steelmakers, has ruled out using the coal due to its sulphur content, while experts believe that Tata Steel would only want small amounts of what is produced. Therefore, the idea that the mine could have a meaningful impact on Britain’s energy policy is laughable.

Besides, steelmakers have dramatically reduced Russian imports since the invasion of Ukraine, and the industry is moving rapidly to low-carbon alternatives to coking coal such as hydrogen anyway, so the project risks quickly becoming an expensive white elephant.

The Prime Minister has also come under sustained pressure from local Tory MPS with seats close to the proposed site, who insist it will create hundreds of jobs in a region crying out to be levelled up. Yet, of the 500 jobs touted by the company behind the mine, as many as a fifth of the total are expected to be taken by people from outside the area.

As Tory climate champion Alok Sharma points out, way more jobs would be created by developing green industries in the area – as many as 6,000, according to estimates from the Local Government Association.

In a country where we remain far too reliant on gas imports, have failed to develop carbon capture, new nuclear is more than a decade away, and fracking is a non-starter, a coal mine in Cumbria is another pointless distraction from the overwhelming need to address Britain’s longstanding energy failings.

‘Eighty-five per cent of what comes out of the pit is expected to be exported’