Labor ignores the coal mine elephant in the room

Labor has been asked to clarify its position on the UK’s first deep coal mine in more than 30 years – as it wages an election campaign that has put clean energy front and center.

The proposed mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria, would extract 2.8 million tonnes of coking coal a year from beneath the Irish Sea to produce steel, emitting around 220 million tonnes of greenhouse gases over the its lifespan.

The mine has become a hot political point in discussions over the UK’s commitment to reaching net zero emissions by 2050. In 2021, the International Energy Agency concluded that any new extraction of fossil fuels was incompatible with global decarbonization goals.

On the eve of a widely expected victory in the July 4 election, Labour’s lack of clarity on the polluting mine poses embarrassing questions for a party that has based its program on making Britain “a superpower”. clean energy.

In the new manifesto, launched last week, Labor says it will not revoke existing oil and gas licenses, but neither will it grant new ones. The party explicitly ruled out issuing licenses for new coal mines and said it would permanently ban fracking.

The Woodhouse coal mine was granted planning permission by the then Conservative secretary Michael Gove in December 2022, but has been mired in controversy over its environmental impact and plagued by legal delays.

Labor has so far failed to determine whether it would seek to cancel 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 constituency of Workington and Whitehaven, where the mine would be built, has made his opposition clear.

Speaking to his local newspaper, the News & Star, last week, future MP Josh MacAlister said the mine was “a risky bet for new jobs”. “The simplest thing in the world would be to tell you that the mine will solve our problems – but that’s not the case,” he said.

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

According to one source, he told dozens of residents in November that the region would be better off without the mine. However, he would not have specified whether he would oppose the national party if it supported the development of the project.

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

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

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

“You cannot be a leading country on climate and agree to new coal mines,” she said. “These two things are fundamentally incompatible.”

‘Evasive’

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-wrote an opinion piece for the News & Star with Cumberland Council leader Mark Fryer. In the article, they claimed the mine would be “obsolete by the 2030s and 2040s at the latest, due to changes in the global steel industry which is rapidly moving toward clean steel production.”

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

Since then, the National Labor Party has revealed little about its position.

Karl Conor, a former Labor councilor for Copeland, told DeSmog that given the controversies surrounding the project and the local community’s interest, MacAlister and Labor will be unable to “get the campaign through without having to hang on to their guns.” colors on the mast”.

Unlike MacAlister, future Conservative MP Andrew Johnson strongly supported the mine, telling the News & Star: “It offers the best prospects in years to create new jobs, attract significant investment to west Cumbria and help to modernize the coastline. railway.

“If I am elected, I will work tirelessly to fight to get the mine open and these jobs created.”

West Cumbria Mining’s claims that the project would create around 500 jobs have been heavily disputed.

Campaign group South Lakes Action on Climate Change (SLACC), which is taking legal action against the decision to greenlight the project, said “no methodology” had been provided by the mining company to support these assertions.

A source within the new Cumberland Joint Authority told DeSmog she believed the local Conservative party would “try to make (the local election campaign) about the mine.”

“In the same way that they focused the Uxbridge by-election on the ULEZ (London Ultra Low Emission Zone), Sadiq Khan’s flagship policy, the Conservatives’ electoral strategy will be to focus on mining “, they said. “…If I were in their place, that’s what I would do.”

The remuneration conundrum

Any new administration seeking to block the Cumbria coal mine could face a compensation claim of up to tens of millions, according to a well-placed legal expert.

Matthew McFeeley, solicitor at Richard Buxton Solicitors, advised SLACC on its legal challenge. He told DeSmog that much will depend on the judicial review, which is due to take place on July 16, less than a fortnight after the general election.

“If the court were to find that the planning permission was granted illegally, then everything would have to go back to the secretary of state for a new decision,” McFeeley said.

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

If campaigners succeed in arguing that the mine’s planning permission is illegal, the company behind the coal project – West Cumbria Mining (WCM) – will be unable to make any compensation claim. .

However, if the next government decided to revoke the building permit without a court order, the taxpayer would be legally obliged to pay compensation, McFeeley said. The amount would depend on an assessment of what WCM stood to lose due to the revocation of the authorization.

The legal challenge is one of several hurdles WCM must clear before it can begin work on the site. McFeeley also said the compensation claim could run into tens of millions or more. “At this point, they are investing their money at risk,” he said.

WCM left its offices in west Cumbria on the eve of the 2021 public inquiry after Singapore-based EMR Capital, one of the mine’s main financiers, oversaw a program of ” cost reduction “. The company has until the end of 2025 to begin work.

Other obstacles also stand in the way of mine construction, including approval of maritime permits, habitat monitoring and a risk assessment.

Despite the many problems associated with the mine, Professor Willis, of Lancaster University, said abandoning the plans could still prove tricky for a new government.

“There is a timing problem here for Labor,” she said. “They have promised a lot in terms of green industrial policy through Great British Energy (Labour’s proposed state-owned energy company) and state-backed investment in green industries. But it will take time to get started.

“So at least over the next year you’ll find yourself in a situation where they’ll say no to the mine but they won’t say yes to anything else in the region. It’s quite difficult politically.

“Until the community sees a physical project with jobs attached being offered to them, they will be quite cynical about it.”

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