UK approves new coal mine for first time in decades

Britain on Wednesday approved its first new coal mine in decades to produce the highly polluting fuel used in steelmaking, a project critics say will undermine Britain’s climate goals.

The Woodhouse Colliery, to be developed by West Cumbria Mining in northwest England, seeks to extract coking coal that is used in the steel industry, not electricity generation. The expectation is to create around 500 jobs.

The bill, introduced in 2014, has been criticized by the British government’s own independent climate advisory panel, as well as climate activists and organisations, including Greta Thunberg and Greenpeace.

It is expected that most of the coal produced will be exported to Europe. Planning documents show that more than 80% of the coal the mine will produce annually must, after five years, be shipped to an export terminal on England’s east coast.

Greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal – as in steel and power plants – are the biggest contributor to climate change, and countries’ independence from coal is seen as vital to achieving global climate goals.

The UK has passed laws requiring all greenhouse gas emissions to be zero by 2050.

Earlier this year, the chairman of the UK’s Independent Committee on Climate Change, John Gummer, said Woodhouse’s project was “absolutely indefensible”.

The coal mine, the size of approximately 60 football fields or 23 hectares, is expected to take two years to build, at an estimated cost, in 2019, of £165 million (R$1 billion). The mine is expected to be operated for 50 years.

It will supply steel mills in the UK and Western Europe and will employ just over 500 workers when it reaches peak production after five years, with more than 80% of them working underground in coal production.

The UK, cradle of the industrial revolution, once employed 1.2 million people in nearly 3,000 coal mines. Its last deep mine closed in 2015.