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Tag: coal

  • COP29 puts world on course for more extreme weather – and more deaths

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    Original article by Paul Rogers republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

    After a disappointing COP29, we should prepare for more extreme weather events like the floods that hit Valencia last month
     | David Ramos/Getty Images

    Summit proves change won’t come until floods and wildfires are killing tens of thousands in rich Global North cities

    While COP29 in Baku narrowly avoided collapsing, its results were bitterly disappointing for delegations from across the Global South, who ended up with barely a quarter of the annual $1.3trn of support they were seeking by 2035 to respond to climate breakdown.

    Quite apart from other factors, more than 1,500 pro-carbon lobbyists worked hard to limit progress and ensure that burning oil, gas and coal at profit continues for as long as possible whatever the global consequences. After all, the world’s fossil fuel industries rake in around a trillion dollars in profits a year.

    Meanwhile, more and more examples are emerging of accelerating climate breakdown. The flooding in Valencia is just one, but scarcely noticed in Europe is the thoroughly weird weather being experienced in the eastern United States.

    This autumn there have been over five hundred wildfires in New Jersey alone, a 5,000-acre fire has been burning for a week on the New York-New Jersey border prompting a voluntary evacuation, and New York City’s Fire Department was called out to deal with 271 brush fires in the first two weeks of November alone.

    As if timed for that and certainly released with COP29 in mind, Carbon Brief, a website covering the latest developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy, has mapped every published study on ‘impossible’ weather events – record heatwaves or storms that would not have happened without the overall global climate changes.

    The first such study came in 2004, the year after weeks of extreme heat hit Europe and killed 70,000 people across the continent over several months. That early example of an ‘impossible’ weather event kick-started a new field of research known as ‘extreme event attribution’, which looks at how climate change has influenced extreme weather.

    There are now 600 studies of 750 such extreme events spanning the past 20 years – a tiny fraction of the total number of these kinds of events. Of these 750, Carbon Brief found that scientists and researchers had concluded that 74% were made more likely or more severe because of climate change.

    This has added to the growing sense of urgency right across the climate science community coupled with a highly critical view of the whole COP process. Even before the dismaying summit in the Azerbaijani capital, both last year’s COP in Abu Dhabi and the year before in Egypt were notable for their lack of progress even as the urgency of preventing climate breakdown was becoming more and more obvious.

    There are other risks to global security including nuclear weapons, pandemics, cyber warfare, AI misuse and the progressive destruction of biodiversity, but climate breakdown is different from all of these. It is not a future risk, it is a current happening, it is accelerating, and we now have very few years left to get on top of it. If we don’t then a worldwide catastrophe with many hundreds of millions dying and societal collapse will become increasingly likely.

    Does it have to be like that?

    As things stand, in terms of changing attitudes, developments in renewables, resistance of the fossil carbon industries and, of course, Donald Trump’s looming presidency in the US, a reasonable prognosis for the next decade has three elements.

    First, the use of renewable energy resources does continue to increase but not at anything like the rate required, so net carbon emissions will continue to rise, not fall, for most of the next ten years. Second, resistance to decarbonisation will continue from many quarters, no doubt now including the White House. Finally, severe weather events will become both more common and more destructive.

    Eventually, and it might take more than a decade, the disasters will be so great, including sudden weather events in rich cities in the Global North killing many tens of thousands of people, that public pressure across the world will force governments to respond. There will be no alternative to engage in truly transformative change.

    But what that means is that the task ahead by then will be hugely greater than if the transformation starts much sooner, so timescales become crucial, especially what can speed up the process.

    There is, though, one thing to remember at a time of widespread pessimism. If nations had got their act together 25 years ago after the Kyoto Protocols, were signed we would be in a far more favourable position worldwide than we are now. We are acting more than two decades late.

    But climate breakdown is not happening as a slow, steady process of change, creeping up almost unawares. If that had been the case then with all the reasons not to act, especially the global fossil carbon lobby, we would have been in an even worse position now. Instead, it is happening at variable rates in two respects, some parts of the world – such as the polar regions – are warming up much faster than others and extreme weather events are happening much more often.

    We are therefore getting a foretaste of what will affect everyone a few years before it does, and this gives us just a little more time to act. It means that the next ten years, and perhaps even the five years to 2030, will be the key time for us to come to terms with the transformation in society that is essential for global well-being. That is possible, just.

    Original article by Paul Rogers republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

  • Barclays’ $2bn coal loans expose ‘enormous loophole’ in its climate policy

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    Original article by Josephine Moulds republished from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

    Bank accused of ‘trying to have it both ways’ with coal policy that allows financing for huge polluters

    Barclays helped raise nearly $2bn for companies running highly polluting coal-fired power plants in the US, exposing an “enormous loophole” in its climate policy.

    As part of its strategy to reach net zero, the bank has committed to stop financing companies that make more than half their revenues from coal-fired power.

    Last year, however, Barclays helped raise $1.7bn for coal-fired power companies that appear to exceed that threshold, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and ITV News can reveal.

    Among these deals were two $400m loans for Monongahela Power, which generates 95% of its electricity from burning coal at two huge plants in West Virginia. The company only sells electricity that it generates itself, suggesting that the vast majority of its revenues are from coal-fired power.

    Barclays, however, said its policy only prohibits financing for companies that make more than 50% of revenues specifically from generating coal-fired power; and that TBIJ’s calculations did not account for these companies’ revenues from transmitting and distributing that power.

    Barclays was Europe’s biggest lender to the coal power industry last yearAndrea Domeniconi / Alamy

    Seth Feaster, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) think tank, said: “The bank is trying to have it both ways: a public-facing coal policy that sounds like it will no longer support coal-heavy companies, but the technicality [regarding transmission and distribution revenue] has rendered that policy largely meaningless.

    “The bank has created an enormous loophole that appears to allow it to largely continue doing business as usual with coal-friendly utilities.”

    Natasha Landell-Mills, head of stewardship at the asset manager Sarasin & Partners, which holds Barclays debt, said the bank’s position appeared to be “somewhat disingenuous”.

    “In the end, what matters is that coal-fired power falls in keeping with ensuring a safe climate. As investors, we would expect all related activities that enable coal-fired power to be captured and, if they are not, would hope to see the board urgently address this loophole.” She said this was not just a question of how Barclays is run and its reputation, but that continuing to fund high emitters was also financially risky for long-term investors.

    The news comes amid a storm of protest against the bank, which was revealed in May to be Europe’s biggest funder of fossil fuels.

    It is also Europe’s biggest lender to the coal power industry, taking part in $75bn worth of deals for companies active in the sector last year.

    Bold pledges

    Under pressure from its customers and investors, Barclays has made increasingly bold climate promises. It tightened its coal policy in 2022 and said financing the sector not only poses a threat to the planet but could represent a bad lending decision. Yet a number of companies it funded last year appear to be making most of their money from coal-fired power.

    In addition to the Monongahela Power deals, Barclays helped raise $400m for Kentucky Utilities, which in 2022 generated almost three quarters of its electricity from burning coal. This suggests more than half its revenues were from coal-fired power.

    Barclays also helped raise a $500m loan for Louisville Gas & Electric, which generated 83% of its power from coal in 2022. It makes some revenues from selling gas but calculations based on company and government data suggest its revenue share from coal was more than 50%.

    Mill Creek power plant, a coal-fired stations owned by Louisville Gas and ElectricWilliam Alden / Creative Commons

    Neither company appears to be transitioning to renewable power and their owner, PPL Corporation, said it expects they will use coal and natural gas as their predominant fuels “for the foreseeable future”.

    Monongahela Power is investing millions to keep its two West Virginia plants running until 2035 and 2040, despite scientists warning that developed countries must end power generation from coal by 2030. The company aims to build 50MW of solar generation, but that represents less than 2% of its current coal-fired power capacity.

    Barclays told TBIJ the deals complied with its policy “based on publicly disclosed information and our due diligence”. It said its policy does not have a loophole and that its methodology is robust. “An ambition to be net zero by 2050 does not require an immediate exit from financing coal,” the bank said. “Barclays is financing an energy sector in transition, providing finance to meet current energy needs and also financing the scaling of clean energy”.

    PPL, which owns utilities in Kentucky, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, said it had set a clear goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and was transitioning to a cleaner energy mix across the group. It added that it had received approval from the authorities to retire 600MW of coal-fired power generation in Kentucky by 2027. This, however, represents less than 15% of its remaining coal capacity.

    Monongahela Power did not respond to TBIJ’s request for comment.

    Deadly coal plants

    Coal-fired power plants are responsible for more than 40% of global CO2 emissions from energy. At Cop28 UN climate talks in Dubai last year, all countries agreed that accelerating the transition from coal to renewables was essential in order to avert catastrophic climate change.

    Coal is also a major source of toxic air pollution. In the US alone, more than 3,800 people die from soot released by coal-fired power plants every year, according to a report by Sierra Club, a US NGO. While many European banks have distanced themselves from the industry, Barclays has retained strong links with US coal-fired power companies.

    The boom in fracked gas and plunging cost of renewables has changed the landscape for power generation in the US. Seth Feaster at IEEFA said: “[Coal-fired power] companies are going to start struggling because they can’t sell their power in competitive environments.

    “Investing in coal is very risky because most of [these coal plants] are losing money. They’re not going to be around for very long and if something breaks, they tend to shut down early because they can be very costly to repair.”

    Bob Ward from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change said: “The coal industry in the United States is failing, it’s on its way out … there’s no excuse for propping up the American coal industry.” He described the distinction Barclays made between the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity from coal in its policy as “semantics”.

    “What consumers and investors will be expecting is that Barclays are complying with the spirit of their declarations, and not just a technicality,” Ward said. “If you are generating most of your income from burning coal and then distributing the electricity results, then that’s the coal. That’s the coal industry. You’re damaging the climate. And that is what Barclays said they would stop.”

    Last month, the organisers of the Wimbledon tennis championships faced calls to drop Barclays as a sponsor over its ties to fossil fuels and defence companies supplying Israel. Barclays addressed criticism of its defence funding, saying it trades in shares on behalf of clients. “Whilst we provide financial services to these companies, we are not making investments for Barclays.”

    Live Nation also dropped the bank as a sponsor for various music festivals – including Download, Latitude and Isle of Wight – after protests from bands and fans.

    Steff Wright, chairman of the Gusto Group, said his construction and manufacturing business is moving away from banking with Barclays. “As a company that’s working towards a green future, we need to look at our supply chain and who else is on that journey with us.

    “We’d encourage all businesses to move away from them, to put pressure on them to rethink their strategy.”

    Reporters: Josephine Moulds
    Environment editor: Robert Soutar
    Impact producer: Grace Murray
    Deputy editors: Chrissie Giles and Katie Mark
    Editor: Franz Wild
    Production editor: Alex Hess
    Fact checker: Somesh Jha

    This reporting is funded by the Sunrise Project. None of our funders have any influence over our editorial decisions or output.

    Original article by Josephine Moulds republished from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

    More from this project

    Barclays’ billions of ‘sustainable’ finance for fossil fuel industry is greenwash, says investor

    HSBC helped oil and gas industry raise $47bn despite net-zero pledge

    How will new FCA greenwashing rule tackle banks’ dodgy climate claims?

  • For decades, governments have subsidised fossil fuels. But why?

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    Sobrevolando Patagonia/Shutterstock

    Bernard Njindan Iyke, La Trobe University

    Even now, decades after we first began trying to avert the worst of global warming, more than 80% of the world’s total energy comes from fossil fuels.

    You might think this would make fossil fuel production extremely profitable. But it’s not always the case. Much of the most accessible oil has already been extracted and burned. Many countries want to shore up domestic sources of fossil fuels to boost energy security. Energy price fluctuations and competition from new energy sources such as solar, wind and fossil gas have made it harder for some fossil fuel companies to make money, especially in coal.

    This is where fossil fuel subsidies come in. Australia gave A$14.5 billion in subsidies to major fossil fuel producers and consumers in 2023–24 alone.

    You might have wondered – why would some of the largest companies on Earth need subsidies? Here’s why.

    LNG tanker
    Australia’s surging liquefied natural gas industry has been boosted by government funding. KDS Photographics/Shutterstock

    Private companies, public money

    Globally, private companies dominate fossil fuel production, though fossil fuel-rich nations often have state-owned companies, such as Saudi Arabia’s Aramco and Russia’s Rosneft.

    Why would governments give fossil fuel companies money? Many reasons. But the most important is that wealthy countries have historically needed huge volumes of fossil fuels for manufacturing, transport and power. Many countries have some sources of fossil fuels inside their borders, but only a few are self-sufficient. This has enabled fossil fuel giants such as Saudi Arabia to become wealthy beyond belief.

    Many governments have used subsidies to boost their energy security and encourage local producers to seek out new sources of coal, gas and oil. These subsidies can make all the difference in making fossil fuel companies competitive internationally. For instance, Canada spent billions on subsidies to boost its oil sands and fracking projects.

    Subsidies were essential in the United States’ fracking revolution. Novel approaches to extracting fossil gas and oil – boosted by major tax incentives – turned the US from a major importer of oil and gas into a net exporter by 2019.

    You can see why the US did this. At a stroke, it went from being dependent on energy provided by foreign nations to being independent.

    Once subsidies are in place, they become very hard to remove. Indonesia’s lavish fuel subsidies now account for 2% of the nation’s GDP. When the national government tried to walk these back, there were riots.

    And there’s another reason, too. Fossil fuels are still playing an important role in boosting the economy in most nations. Subsidising them has long been seen as a way to maintain economic growth and stability.

    Globally, these subsidies are estimated at a staggering $10.5 trillion each year.

    This figure has grown sharply in recent years, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As European nations tried to wean themselves off Russia’s gas, energy prices surged worldwide. In response, some countries introduced new subsidies to support businesses and consumers.

    The top-line figure of $10.5 trillion includes two types of subsidy – explicit (meaning real dollars change hands) and implicit (for example, governments building roads and railways to encourage crude oil transport).

    Explicit subsidies

    Explicit fossil fuel subsidies are direct financial incentives from governments to fossil fuel producers and consumers. These incentives come in different forms, such as tax breaks, direct payments, grants and price controls. All of them aim to reduce the financial burden associated with fossil fuel production and use.

    In Australia, explicit subsidies include fuel tax credits and exploration tax reductions. Fossil fuel companies can get subsidies to offset the losses they make during the years it takes to find and begin extracting new fossil fuels.

    In the US, oil and gas companies benefit from the oil depletion allowance, which permits them to deduct a percentage of their gross income from oil and gas sales as an expense. They can also claim tax deductions for intangible drilling costs, such as the wages of workers and material needed to find new sources of oil and gas.

    China, too, uses direct subsidies, discounted land-use fees, and preferential loans as explicit subsidies to boost coal production and consumption. The national government also supports fossil fuel consumption through direct payments to consumers.

    coal miners China
    China has used subsidies to encourage exploitation of its large coal resources. zhaoliang70/Shutterstock

    Implicit subsidies

    Implicit subsidies are often described as “imaginary”. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, just that they’re not a direct transfer to directly paid to fossil fuel producers.

    For instance, the cost of burning fossil fuels is borne by the global community and the natural world, in the form of climate change, damage to human health and other harms. Most fossil fuel companies don’t have to pay a cent for the pollution their products cause – so in effect, they are being granted an indirect subsidy.

    Implicit incentives also include government investment in facilities such as transport networks, pipelines, oil refineries and port infrastructure, which will accelerate fossil fuel production and delivery. Think of the Middle Arm development in Darwin, funded by both the federal and territory government.

    Why are these subsidies still being paid?

    As the world grapples with a worsening climate crisis, fossil fuel subsidies are under great scrutiny.

    It’s politically difficult to withdraw subsidies once given. This is why governments around the world have instead begun to give subsidies and tax incentives to green energy developers, including the enormous $500 billion Inflation Reduction Act in the US, the European Union’s Green Deal, and China’s massive subsidies of green technologies such as electric vehicles and solar panels.

    The goal here is to make renewable energy and electrified transport steadily more affordable and competitive – just as fossil fuel subsidies did for oil, gas and coal.

    Bernard Njindan Iyke, Lecturer in Finance, La Trobe University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

  • Tory Leadership Contender Robert Jenrick’s Pro-Coal and Anti-Net Zero Record

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    Original article by Adam Barnett and Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

    The Conservative candidate has changed his tune on climate action, recently attacking Labour’s net zero policies and arguing for new fossil fuel extraction.

    Former Conservative minister Robert Jenrick, who has today entered the race to lead the Tory party, has a growing record of attacks on climate action.

    The MP for Newark – who saw a 23.9 percent swing against him in the general election, and served as secretary of state for immigration under former prime minister Rishi Sunak – has attacked what he calls “net zero zealotry”, and has labelled the UK’s net zero target “dangerous fantasy green politics unmoored from reality”. 

    This is despite Jenrick having hailed the UK’s “world-leading commitment to net zero by 2050” as recently as 2020.

    Jenrick has also called for the building of “new gas power stations” and supports new fossil fuel extraction, including North Sea oil and gas, and the opening of new coal mines. 

    Jenrick’s campaign manager is Conservative MP Danny Kruger, a political reactionary who is also an advisor to climate denier Jordan Peterson’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC).

    His candidacy follows the Conservative Party losing a landslide election on 4 July against a Labour Party committed to climate action, during which the Tories supported new North Sea oil and gas extraction, and the delaying of key climate reforms.

    Almost half of voters (49 percent) believe renewable energy would lower household bills, while only 14 percent say the same for more fossil fuels, according to polling by More in Common. 

    This week saw what climate scientists believe could be the hottest day on record thanks to climate change. The world’s leading climate science group, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has said that there is “a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”.

    Attacks on Labour’s Climate Agenda

    In his response to the announcement of Labour’s legislative agenda in the King’s Speech last week (19 July), Jenrick used an address in the House of Commons to launch an attack on the government’s climate policies, spreading familiar misinformation. 

    Jenrick said that “despite being only responsible for one percent of global emissions, we find ourselves with a government pursuing for ideological reasons a net zero policy which is going to make it harder for our own consumers to afford their bills, [and] which is further going to erode our industrial base”.

    Downplaying a country’s emissions is a “widely deployed” tactic used to delay international climate action, according to academics. Contrary to Jenrick’s claims, the UK’s cost of living crisis has been made worse by its dependence on fossil fuels, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

    And rather than “eroding our industrial base”, net zero policies are already creating new jobs and economic development. The UK’s net zero economy grew nine percent in 2023 to £74 billion – equivalent to 3.8 percent of the total UK economy, and supported more than 765,000 jobs, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU). 

    Jenrick also attacked Labour’s green investment vehicle, Great British Energy – launched today – as a quango “which serves no apparent purpose”, warned that new solar farms would “despoil our countryside”, and claimed that “200,000 jobs in the oil and gas sector have been put in danger”, using a widely debunked figure.

    The chief advisor to the National Farmers Union (NFU) has said solar farms “do not in any way present a risk to the UK’s food security”, while NFU president Tom Bradshaw has attacked the claims made by Jenrick and others as “sensationalist”. 

    On 11 July, when Labour announced its decision not to defend the new proposed coal mine in Cumbria in the High Court, Jenrick posted on X: “First the oil and gas industry, now coking coal for the steel industry. Less than a week in and jobs and economic growth are already being sacrificed on the altar of Labour’s net zero zealotry.”

    In 2021, Jenrick decided not to challenge the planning application for the new mine – the UK’s first deep coal mine in more than 30 years, which would extract 2.8 million tonnes of coking coal a year, emitting an estimated 220 millions tonnes of greenhouse gases over its lifetime.

    Net Zero U-Turn

    Jenrick’s attacks on Labour’s green policies mirror his growing criticism of climate action – despite having previously celebrated the Conservatives Party’s support for net zero.

    In February, Jenrick wrote an article for The Telegraph – a newspaper that regularly publishes attacks on climate science and net zero reforms – claiming that voters are sick of the “dishonesty” from politicians about “what net zero entails”. 

    He said that the UK’s 2050 net zero ambition was decided upon in the summer of 2019, “while the country was occupied by Brexit debates”, and was “nodded through the Commons with fewer than 90 minutes of debate”.

    At the time, Jenrick, who was Treasury minister, welcomed the adoption of the target. In 2020, while serving as communities secretary under Boris Johnson, Jenrick praised the UK’s “world-leading commitment to net zero by 2050”. Ahead of the 2019 general election, he said that voters should support the Conservatives on the basis that the UK was the “first advanced economy in the world to pass a net zero target”.

    Yet, in the February 2024 Telegraph article, Jenrick wrote that it was obvious to him “at the time” that the costs associated with net zero “were likely to be astronomical.” The article went on to claim that “reaching net zero by 2050 requires us to overhaul the material foundations of our economy in just three decades”, and that the result “is a dangerous fantasy green politics unmoored from reality and that lacks the buy-in of the public”.

    Jenrick’s campaign for Tory leader is being run by fellow Conservative MP Danny Kruger.

    Kruger is the chair of the New Conservatives faction in Parliament – a group that advocates for more socially conservative, right-wing ideas within the Tory party, campaigning against “woke” culture, and immigration. 

    It also appears that New Conservative press officer Sam Armstrong is serving as one of Jenrick’s campaign aides, although Armstrong neither confirmed nor denied his role when approached for comment. 

    As DeSmog has revealed, the New Conservatives received £50,000 in December from the Legatum Institute, a free market think tank that formerly employed Kruger as a senior fellow. 

    In May of this year, Jenrick gave a speech to the Legatum Institute’s ‘Free Market Roadshow’ event at the group’s London office, where he called for new fossil fuel plants. He said: “We are smothering our ability to build new nuclear power stations, to build new gas power stations, which we’ve got to have to have the base capacity that we need as a country, in this mesh of regulation.”

    The Legatum Institute’s parent company is UAE-based investment firm Legatum Group, which co-owns the right-wing broadcaster GB News. The outlet frequently spreads climate denial, both via its presenters and guests.

    Kruger is also on the advisory board of another Legatum project, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), alongside some of the world’s most high-profile climate science deniers. 

    Jenrick has pledged to win back voters who have switched from the Tories to Reform UK, the right-wing populist party led by Nigel Farage, which is bankrolled by climate deniers and polluting interests, and campaigns to “scrap all of net zero”.

    Polling from the Conservative Environment Network, a green caucus backed by dozens of Tory MPs, found that only two percent of voters who planned to switch from the Conservative to Reform saw climate change as the most important issue for them in July’s election.

    Original article by Adam Barnett and Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

  • Labour Ignores Coal Mine-Shaped Elephant in the Room

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    Original article by Tommy Greene republished from DeSmog

    Demonstrators outside the proposed Woodhouse Colliery, south of Whitehaven, September 2021. Credit: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo

    Questions over compensation and employment could make it politically difficult for Labour to scrap the Whitehaven project, experts told DeSmog.

    Labour has been urged to clarify its stance on the UK’s first deep coal mine in more than 30 years – as it fights an election campaign that has put clean energy at the fore.

    The proposed mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria, would extract 2.8 million tonnes of coking coal a year from under the Irish sea to produce steel, emitting an estimated 220 millions tonnes of greenhouse gases over its lifetime.

    The mine has become a political flashpoint in discussions over the UK’s commitment to reach net zero by 2050. In 2021, the International Energy Agency concluded that any new fossil fuel extraction was incompatible with global decarbonisation targets.

    Ahead of a widely predicted victory at the 4 July election, Labour’s lack of clarity on the polluting mine poses awkward questions for a party that has based its manifesto on making Britain “a clean energy superpower”.

    In the new manifesto, launched last week, Labour says it will not revoke existing oil and gas licences, but will also not grant any new licences. The party has explicitly ruled out issuing licences for new coal mines and says it will ban fracking for good.

    The Woodhouse Colliery was granted planning permission by then Conservative levelling up secretary Michael Gove in December 2022, but has been plagued by controversy over its environmental impact and beset by legal delays.

    So far, Labour has failed to address whether it would seek to overturn planning permission for the project, and has not responded to DeSmog’s requests for clarification.

    In contrast, the party’s parliamentary candidate for the new Workington and Whitehaven constituency, where the mine would be built, has been vocal in his opposition.

    Speaking to his local newspaper the News & Star last week, prospective MP Josh MacAlister said the mine was “a risky bet for new jobs”. “The easiest thing in the world would be to tell you the mine will solve our problems – but it won’t,” he said.

    DeSmog understands that MacAlister has also addressed the issue at a number of local meetings, including to a mining heritage group in Whitehaven. 

    According to a source, he told dozens of residents in November that the area was better off without the mine. However, he reportedly stopped short of clarifying whether he would oppose the national party if it backed the scheme’s development.

    When approached by DeSmog for comment, MacAlister’s team referred DeSmog to his views expressed in the News & Star, adding that they were “consistent with what he has said since being selected”.

    A projection released by YouGov on 5 June shows that MacAlister is expected to win the seat in a landslide, with a predicted 53 percent of the vote to the Conservatives’ 25 percent.

    Rebecca Willis, professor in energy and climate governance at the University of Lancaster, told DeSmog that “the mine has huge symbolic importance” both domestically and in terms of climate diplomacy.

    “You can’t be a leading climate nation and provide consent for new coal mines,” she said. “Those two things are fundamentally incompatible.”

    ‘Non-Committal’

    Despite Labour’s silence, MacAlister’s position appears to align with that of Ed Miliband, the party’s shadow climate change secretary.

    Shortly after the mine was approved, Miliband co-authored an opinion piece for the News & Star with Cumberland’s council leader Mark Fryer. In the article, they argued that the mine would be “obsolete by the 2030s and 2040s at the latest, because of changes to the global steel industry which is rapidly moving towards clean steel production”.

    Miliband reiterated this message at a March 2023 Cumberland Economic Summit event in west Cumbria.

    Since then, the national Labour party has revealed little on its position.

    Karl Conor, a former Labour councillor for Copeland, told DeSmog that given the controversies surrounding the scheme and the interest of the local community, MacAlister and Labour will be unable “to get through the campaign without having to nail their colours to the mast”.

    In contrast to MacAlister, prospective Conservative MP Andrew Johnson has strongly backed the mine, telling the News & Star: “It offers the best prospect in years to create new jobs, attract significant investment into West Cumbria and help to deliver the upgrade to the coastal railway.

    “If elected I will work tireless[ly] to fight for the mine to open and those jobs delivered”.

    Claims by West Cumbria Mining that the project will create around 500 jobs have been strongly disputed.

    Campaign group South Lakes Action on Climate Change (SLACC) group, which is bringing a legal challenge against the decision to greenlight the scheme, said that “no methodology” had been provided by the mining firm to support these claims.

    A source in the new joint Cumberland authority told DeSmog they thought the local Conservative party would “try to make it [the local election campaign] about the mine”. 

    “In the same way they made the Uxbridge by-election all about ULEZ [London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone], Sadiq Khan’s flagship policy, the Tories’ electoral strategy will be to make it about the mine,” they said. “… If I was in their position, it’s what I’d be doing.”

    Compensation Conundrum

    Any new administration looking to block the Cumbria coal mine may be hit with a compensation claim that runs into the tens of millions, according to a well-placed legal expert. 

    Matthew McFeeley, a lawyer with Richard Buxton Solicitors, has been advising SLACC on its legal challenge. He told DeSmog that much will depend on the judicial review, which is scheduled to be heard on 16 July, less than a fortnight after the general election.

    “If the court were to find that the planning permission had been unlawfully granted, then it would all have to go back to the secretary of state for a new decision,” McFeeley said.

    In this scenario, he explained, a Labour administration could argue that the climate and environmental impacts of the project are too great, and refuse to grant permission.  

    If campaigners can successfully argue the mine’s planning permission is unlawful, the company behind the coaling scheme – West Cumbria Mining (WCM) – would not be able to issue any kind of compensation claim.

    However, if the next government decided to revoke planning permission without a legal ruling, the taxpayer would be legally obliged to pay compensation, McFeeley said. The amount would depend on an assessment of how much WCM stood to lose from the permission being revoked.

    The legal challenge is one of a number of hurdles WCM has to jump over before it can begin work at the site. McFeeley also indicated that the compensation claim could run into the tens of millions, or higher.  “They’re investing their money at risk at this point,” he said.

    WCM vacated its offices in west Cumbria on the eve of the 2021 public inquiry after the Singapore-based EMR Capital, one of the mine’s major financial backers, oversaw a “cost-saving” programme. The company has until the end of 2025 to get shovels in the ground.

    Other hurdles also stand in the way of the mine’s construction – including approval of marine licences, habitat monitoring and a risk assessment.

    Despite the many issues associated with the mine, Professor Willis, of the University of Lancaster, said that scrapping the plans may still prove awkward for an incoming government.

    “There’s a timing issue for Labour here,” she said. “They’ve promised a lot in terms of green industrial policy through Great British Energy [Labour’s proposed state-owned energy company] and publicly-backed investment in green industries. But that will take a while to get going.

    “So, at least over the next year, you’ll have the situation where they’ll be saying no to the mine but they’re not saying yes to anything else in the area. That’s quite difficult politically.

    “Until the community actually sees a physical project with attached jobs being offered to them, they’re going to be pretty cynical about it.”

    West Cumbria Mining did not respond to DeSmog’s request for comment.

    Original article by Tommy Greene republished from DeSmog