Michael Gove has approved the U.K.’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 steel-making for many years. The Telegraph has the story.
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 coal-based steel production on climate change.
The Government’s top climate advisor, Lord Deben, previously warned 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 on Wednesday, Mr Gove argued the mine would have an “overall neutral effect on climate change” and the “likely amount of coal used in steel making 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 10-15 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.”
Worth reading in full.
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Yes! Excellent news
Now watch all the ecoidiots kick off and stop it
Anyone tell me, did they ever protest outside the Chinese embassy with banners saying “no more ageing steam locomotives hauling coal from filthy opencast Chinese mines” (as was the case at least until a few years ago, and maybe still)?
Still building them Hugh, as is India.
As for the Ecovists, they are still as laughably short of critical thinking . I notice that dreadful woman Jo Lucas has described it as a ‘crime against humanity’. Silly cow.
That would be a fair sized banner.
It looks like a wise choice overall, especially if it reduces the need for shipping in coal for the steel industry. Might even be a backdoor acknowledgement that it would be wise to manufacture steel in the UK, rather than importing it from elsewhere, such as China.
I guess it might even have an effect on the market pricing of coal used in the steel industry. I wonder what the firm that runs the open cast mine (known as a “land reclamation scheme”) at Ffos y Fran thinks about it!
All those smug people virtue signaling by driving expensive EVs just had their imaginary contribution to the ‘climate’ thingy undone with this one.
The reality is that nothing which will or won’t be done in the UK will have a significant effect on overall levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as most of it comes from natural sources and the amount of man-released CO2 in the UK is tiny fraction of the global amount of man-released CO2. The CO2-luddites know this as well. But they want to dictate policy where they can as good as they can and not accomplish anything sensible, not even something sensible according to their ideas of that. Gove is being accused of committing a mortal sin, not of doing something with a tangible effect.
Linking carbon dioxide to climate is beyond stupid. Let’s not fall for the same propoganda as the eco nutters.
I didn’t mention climate (whatever that’s supposed to be).
It doesn’t include record low polar temperatures, but does include record highs at airfields…
What I was trying to get at is that (global) climate is an ill-defined term. Quoting Wikipedia:
Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years.[1][2] More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years.
So, something is being averaged over a period of months or 30 years or millions of years. Presumably long-term is supposed to refer to anything from 30 years to millions of years. This seems a little imprecise.
Indeed. Actually, the definition of the term “long term average” varies from place to place, in particular the number of years, and the start and end varies a lot.
But our hand wringing phony planet saving politicians mostly only care about getting a little gold star on their lapel from the UN for pretending to save the planet and we can all freeze, put on 3 jumpers, close the windows and curtains and maybe nip to the library for a bit of heat. This is coking coal for steel but we should be using coal for heat as well. We cannot unilaterally save the planet but it isn’t and never has been about planets in the first place. It is the UN agenda of Sustainable Devlopment (Eco Socialism), where wealthy western countries are deemed to have used up more than their fair share of the fossil fuels in the ground. But actually, there are 20 times more deposits in the ground than the world has already used.
Lord Deben or John Gummer as he used to be called with his Committee on Climate Change is one of the largest malignant tumours on UK public finances, democracy and freedom in history.
And, I’ve often wondered if his daughter, to whom he once force fed a dodgy bse laden beef burger, turned vegetarian as a result.
(Good job he wasn’t the vaccine minister).
Just as Maggie said, “the coal isn’t going anywhere.”
And she was right, it didn’t. And now is the time to use it again, as doing so once more makes economic sense.
There was never any economic sense in destroying our mining industry. At the very least we should have kept all of it ticking over. So why did our governments let this happen?
Stupidity or downright malice?
I recommend reading Black Diamonds
It’s about the Fitzwilliams and Wentworth Woodhouse.
Stupidity, malice, jealousy, implosion – with good people trying to be good despite it all… and failing.
Thanks. I will look this up.
I reckon I can guarantee that people freezing in the Ukraine don’t give a hoot right now about carbon emissions. And nor will people here when they really feel the pinch.
Isn’t carbon (ie good quality coal) of a high degree of purity required to make high quality steel?
The reaction from Labour (totally opposed to the mine) shows how they’ve abandoned any pretence to represent working class people, and are now totally dominated by the metropolitan middle class.
Before Blair became leader I would’ve laughed at anyone who suggested that Labour would throw working class people from deprived Northern regions under the bus, but that’s what they would do if in power. How they hope to win back the red wall with these sorts of policies is beyond me.
Labour won’t ‘win back’ anything. If the WEFfers decide Labour can have a turn Kneel will be installed irrespective of how the electorate votes.
“But the project has been hugely controversial because of the impact of coal-based steel production on climate change”———Except that using local coal has less of an environmental impact than bringing coal from afar. —–But we have to remember that activists come from the perspective of not wanting any human impact at all from anything. They would ban all fossil fuel use by next Tuesday despite that fact that it provides 90% of the worlds energy and apart from Nuclear there is NO REPLACEMENT for it. But that is of no concern when ideology trumps common sense.
I still suggest a much more mundane explanation: This costs money. And that’s something so-called climated activists want to get spent on their own projects, eg, onshore wind turbines, regardless if this makes any sense.
Marvellous. Excellent news. But why did we stop in the first place?Why do we have to bring industries to their knees before doing anything?
Drill, mine, frack, whatever it takes to become a net exporter of electricity and energy again.
We need more CO2, not less.
The CCC should be sent to jail for deliberately destroying our livelihoods and economy.
Like many I am not a Gove fan but I’m pleased he has the guts to use the coal under our feet rather than importing it from other countries. If we are to produce steel there is currently no viable alternative to using coal and I would hope that steel produced in the UK has less pollution that that imported from overseas. If we are to return to being a financially self supporting country we need heavy industry providing employment and products for export. It has been the trend to reduce our heavy industry and emissions by importing these products from overseas where the manufacture generally has higher emissions than with our controls we would. This is a false way of reducing global emissions. Imported products should add the emissions caused at their source to our emissions total which would not make us look as good as we claim. If we reclaim our industry, which at one time we were good at, it would increase our employment and profitability as a country. It would take a major change in the way we value engineers and skilled workers and would take time, but we are currently in a position where we can’t make so many products we rely on because the production and expertise has been exported overseas. Of course the geen nutters would prefer we did without any modern comforts and go back to living in stone age conditions. Young people protesting about the results of the manufacture of the products they take for granted now,would not like to return to the life we lived only a few decades ago with no central heating or double glazing, only outside toilets and very basic bathing conditions. It seems they don’t realise what they are protesting about and don’t realise if they got what they wanted how it would effect them.