Act Daily News
—
The UK has greenlit a controversial plan to open the nation’s first new coal mine in three many years, a bit greater than a 12 months after the nation tried to persuade the world to ditch coal on the COP26 local weather talks in Glasgow.
Michael Gove, the UK housing and communities secretary, on Wednesday accredited the plan to open the Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria, a county in northwestern England that’s residence to the World Heritage-listed Lake District.
The controversial mine is anticipated to create greater than 500 jobs. But the environmental trade-off is steep: The UK Climate Change Committee (CCC), an unbiased group that advises the federal government, has estimated the mine and the coal it would produce will emit round 9 million tons of planet-warming emissions yearly.
Supporters of the mine argue the mission will create jobs and safe the fossil gas for British steelmaking; nonetheless, 85% of the coal mined is because of be exported.
The CCC has criticized the choice. Committee chairman Lord Deben mentioned in an announcement: “Phasing out coal use is the clearest requirement of the global effort towards Net Zero. We condemn, therefore, the Secretary of State’s decision to consent to a new deep coal mine in Cumbria, contrary to our previous advice. This decision grows global emissions and undermines UK efforts to achieve Net Zero.”
The mine’s approval was additionally met with fierce criticism from scientists and environmentalists.
“A new coal mine in Cumbria makes no sense environmentally or economically,” mentioned Paul Ekins, Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy on the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, in an announcement. “It will add to global CO2 emissions, as the new supply will not replace other coal but divert it elsewhere, and it will become stranded in the 2030s as the steel industry globally moves away from coal.”
Ekins additionally mentioned that the mine’s approval “trashes the UK’s reputation as a global leader on climate action and opens it up to well justified charges of hypocrisy – telling other countries to ditch coal while not doing so itself.”
The authorities initially accredited the mission, however then put it on maintain after a wave of protests, together with a 10-day starvation strike by two teenage activists.
It got here underneath intense stress to reject the plan in 2021, the 12 months it hosted the COP26 talks in Glasgow.
Alok Sharma, the COP26 President and a lawmaker for the governing Conservative Party, campaigned towards the mine.
“Opening a new coal mine will not only be a backward step for UK climate action but also damage the UK’s hard-won international reputation, through our COP26 Presidency, as a leader in the global fight against climate change,” he mentioned forward of the announcement on Wednesday.
The resolution comes a bit greater than a 12 months after the convention, and after prolonged discussions between the UK authorities, native authorities and the general public.
The Cumbria County Council had additionally accredited the plan 3 times, but it surely backtracked its resolution final February and known as for a planning inquiry, successfully shifting the choice to the nationwide authorities.
The Whitehaven mine, also referred to as the Woodhouse Colliery, is scheduled to function till 2049, which is only a 12 months earlier than the UK’s self-imposed deadline to slash greenhouse gasoline emissions to web zero (emitting as little greenhouse gasoline as potential, and offsetting any emissions that can not be prevented).
According to the International Energy Agency, funding into new fossil fuels infrastructure should cease instantly if the world needs any probability of reaching web zero by 2050. The newest local weather science reveals that reaching web zero by mid-century is important to maintain temperatures from rising effectively above 1.5 levels Celsius, in contrast with pre-industrial instances. Beyond that threshold, the world will face local weather disaster impacts that might take millennia to appropriate, or may very well be irreversible altogether.
Climate activists have protested towards the mission, whereas West Cumbria Mining, which is growing the mine, mentioned the mission would carry a whole lot of recent jobs right into a struggling area. Its opponents argue these jobs is probably not safe, given the large momentum in Europe to part out coal.
“Opening a coal mine in Cumbria is investing in 1850s technology and does not look forward to the 2030s low carbon local energy future,” Stuart Haszeldine, a professor on the School of GeoSciences on the University of Edinburgh, mentioned in an announcement.