UK greenlights first coal mine in 30 years

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
7 Dec 2022 23:23

The size of the mine is about 23 hectares and will take approximately two years to build at a cost estimated in 2019 at 165 million pounds ($201 million).

Britain approves first new coal mine in decades.

On Wednesday, the UK gave the go-ahead for its first new deep coal mine in 30 years, indicating once more that the British government is inconsiderate of the environment.

The Woodhouse Colliery, which is located in northwest England and developed by West Cumbria Mining, was unveiled as a project in 2014 and has come under fire by several political figures, including Greta Thunberg, Greenpeace, and the parliament's independent climate advisory panel.

The project, which is expected to generate 500 jobs and operate for 50 years, states the extracted coal will be solely consumed by the steel industry, not electricity generation.

It further plans to export most of the produced coal to Europe, specifically to steelmakers.

Once it reaches peak production after a period of five years, more than 80% of the coal produced annually will be sent to an export terminal on the east coast.

The size of the mine is about 23 hectares and will take approximately two years to build at a cost estimated in 2019 at 165 million pounds ($201 million).

The UK has a coal mining history that goes back many hundreds of years.

It once employed some 1.2 million people at nearly 3,000 collieries.

The last operating deep coal mine in the United Kingdom, Kellingley colliery in North Yorkshire, closed in December 2015.

Being the single biggest contributor to climate change, accounting for 30% of all energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, weaning countries off coal is considered vital to achieving global climate targets.

The UK passed a bill on October 2021 requiring it to decarbonize all sectors of the UK economy to meet net-zero targets by 2050.