High court: Cumbria coalmine project will be net zero

The company that is behind the first new mine in the UK in 30 years argued before the High Court on Tuesday that the mine would be “unique and net zero”.

West Cumbria Mining, (WCM), continued to defend its mine in court, which will produce up to 60m tonnes coking coal over its lifetime. This is after the government declared that its planning approval was illegal, because it did not take into consideration downstream emissions when using coal.

Last week, lawyers representing Angela Rayner as secretary of state for Housing, Communities and Local Government said that the decision to give planning permission in December 2022 for the Cumbrian Mine was “an error in law”. The government notified the court of the decision to cancel the permission for the Cumbrian mine in December 2022.

The new Labour government resigned after a landmark Supreme Court decision invalidated planning permission for an oil well at Horse Hill on the Weald, in Surrey. In the judgment, the court found that the climate impact of burning oil, coal and gas should be considered when deciding on whether or not to approve projects.

WCM’s Tuesday statement affirmed that its new mine in Whitehaven is legal, and that the Surrey decision has no impact on it.

WCM’s lawyers said that the mine was a unique net zero mine, which would produce coking coal to make high-quality steel, vital for the future of net zero emissions in the country. For example, it would be used to build wind turbines and electric vehicles, or even trains.

In documents presented at the hearing, the company stated: “The use and extraction of this metallurgical coking coal in the process of steel production will not result in any increase of the amount of coal consumed. Therefore, there will be no net increase of GHG emissions.”

The argument was that the Surrey case did not affect the legality of the planning approval granted for the Cumbrian Mine.

Friends of the Earth claimed that the permit was granted illegally, because the downstream emissions were not taken into account as required by environmental impact assessment laws.

Lawyers representing FoE stated that, given the Supreme Court’s decision in the Surrey Case, the climate impacts of burning coal and oil should have been considered when deciding if the project was approved.

FoE’s lawyers stated that “WCM failed to assess or quantify the downstream combustion emission from coal extracted from mine.”

The International Energy Agency said that no new oil or gas exploration should be undertaken in order to keep global warming to 1.5C (2.7F).

FoE said that the approval of the mining project by Michael Gove was hypocritical. Gove granted planning permission a month after UK held the Cop26 Climate Conference and was a global leader in pushing to phase out coal and fossil fuels.

The UK’s Port Talbot and Scunthorpe steel plants had both announced that they would close their blast furnaces. This undermined WCM’s claim, that the coal will be used to produce steel in the UK.

FoE claims that the total lifetime emissions of the mine, including the carbon dioxide equivalent from burning coal, will exceed 220m tons. FoE stated that this is “more than half the UK’s overall emissions for 2022”.

“Ninety nine per cent of these emission are due to the use of coal.” The mining process produces less than 1% of the emissions.

Slacc, who took on the second legal challenge against the legality mine, stated that the operation emissions of the mine alone would amount to 8,2m tonnes CO 2 – “about 788m litres petrol”.

The hearing continues.