Today (Sat 15^th October 2022) the Scottish government has stated that the “era of coal is over”. Lorna Slater, Co-leader of the Scottish Greens, announced at their party conference the preferred position against coal mining, for all types of coal.

This is essentially a ban on coal mining in Scotland, similar to the one on fracking. The Scottish Government doesn’t have ultimate say on mineral extraction, but the preferred position means that local councils won’t be able to permit new coal mines under Scottish policy.

Image credit: the Guardian

Scotland was once the heartland of UK coal mining, as the above 2008 image shows, Scotland dominated the UK in its extraction of coal via opencast mines. The last deep Scottish coal mine, Longannet pit, in Fife, closed in 2002 and the final coal load was transported from an East Ayrshire opencast coal mine in 2020. Longannet coal power station closed its doors in 2016, ending electricity production from coal in the country. However, in recent years there has recently movement towards an application for a new underground coking coal mine in Dumfries and Galloway.

At a site called Lochinvar an Australian company, NAE Ltd wanted to extract up to 33.7 million tonnes of coking coal for steelworks in the rest of UK and beyond (there are no major Scottish steel works using coal) NAE Ltd wanted to mine between 2025 and 2051, under a massive area under Canonbie near Gretna, in South West Scotland. This would have emitted around 73 million tonnes of CO2 and around 750 thousand tonnes of methane, a powerful climate change accelerant. This announcement should stop this application from ever progressing.

The area of the proposed Lochinvar coking coal mine

Coal Action Network strongly supports the Green Party’s position that, “I’m calling on the UK Government to follow us. To make the right call for once. To ban coal extraction for good.”

The UK government is still deliberating on whether to prevent an underground coking coal mine starting at Whitehaven, a decision is due this autumn. The Coal Authority has been taken to Judicial Review by Coal Action Network in the hope that it will reverse its decision on Aberpergwm underground coking coal mine extension. There are also two Welsh opencast coal extension proposals.

The UK government has been keen to be seen to say the right things regarding coal, but has failed to take the many opportunities to stop the mining industry to date.

Today’s decision has been hard won by the communities, campaigners and organisations such as Coal Action Scotland who fought opencast coal mine applications in Scotland and created the foundations for this decision.

Lloyd’s of London Chairman, Bruce Carnegie-Brown, has allegedly offered an ‘olive branch to eco-activists’ – as reported in The Insurer this week. Having listened to his comments, we’re not so sure – and we certainly won’t be placated until the insurance industry’s actions start speaking louder than their words.  

Industry publication The Insurer has released two clips from a recent panel discussion on climate issues with Carnegie-Brown and Canada’s former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, chaired by The Insurer’s managing editor, Peter Hastie. 

An olive branch to unreasonable people

The Insurer’s basis for claiming Carnegie-Brown offered climate activists an ‘olive branch', is based around their assertion that he states ‘eco activists were “clearly” needed’ to bring about change. The clip from the discussion, however, presents a different story. Instead, Bruce describes ‘eco-activists’ as ‘unreasonable people.’ What Carnegie-Brown actually says is ‘clearly’ needed is ‘some change in our perceptions about the impact of the way we behave in our everyday lives.’ This speaks to a desire of top polluters and their enablers, the key drivers of climate change, to push the responsibility onto individual behaviour – and away from themselves. It also implies our everyday lives are equal in their contributions to climate change. In reality, the richest 1% of the population are responsible for more than 15% of global emissions. As highlighted by the United Nations’ IPCC, we need change on a much larger scale in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change. This includes, regardless of existing construction, no new coal plants to be built or become active. 

Frontline communities are not your rhetorical counterpoints

One of Carnegie-Brown’s main criticisms of the growing global movement putting pressure on insurers worldwide was the ‘tendency to be single issue based.’ Instead, he argues that climate change cannot get addressed on a case-by-case basis. We would be the first to agree with that! We need market-wide policy to effectively mitigate climate change. This is something we have been continually pressuring Lloyd’s to take – our first demand of them is an immediate phase out of the insurance of all coal and fossil fuels. Lloyd’s targets are woefully inadequate, and there has been no effort to report on whether members are fulfilling their own commitments, though we know from other sources that they are not.  In this sense, the same case-by-case basis ‘strategy’ that Carnegie-Brown is so critical of is driven in part by Lloyd’s own inaction and lack of transparency. 

It is frontline communities who bear the brutal impacts of these projects. Our actions stand in solidarity with those most affected by extraction. It’s misleading to caution, as Harper does during the panel, that ‘satisfying the activists in London when you decommission a power plant, but on the ground in some emerging economy it may be terrible.’ This sets up a false dichotomy – implying those ‘on the ground’ are not actively campaigning against extraction, when in fact all the insurance campaigns we work on are led by communities on the ground who are demanding better alternatives to fossil fuels. There are the disastrous risks to people on the ground from the projects that continue to be insured on the London market, such as forced displacement, water contamination, catastrophes such as failed tailings dams, extensive habitat and biodiversity loss.

The concern voiced by the panel on behalf of ‘people on the ground’ is therefore misdirected. It would be better directed by placing exclusions on the Lloyds marketplace which would see these disastrous projects turned away at the door.  We highlight that we are continuing to demand the democratisation of the insurance industry to force a just transition for all. 

Carnegie-Brown also speaks of the need for ‘common data’ to support sector wide action on climate change. Yet the data is already there. And it says this: there can be no new fossil fuel projects starting after 2021 if we are to stay within 1.5 degrees of warming. Instead, Carnegie-Brown suggests a reduction of carbon intensive activity that ‘reduces every year to get to net zero by 2050.’ This flies in the face of existing data – net-zero by 2050 is not enough. At a bare minimum, we need the insurance sector to be meeting the United Nations’ Race to Zero criteria. Given the availability of extensive scientific evidence, the panel’s calls for ‘data’ in order to act seem really to be calls for data that support their current position, rather than challenge them to change. 

We need more than a PR story

So, while The Insurer reports on this positively, characterising it as recognising the need for climate activists to bring about change, at most this amounts to greenwashing. In a telling comment, Stephen Harper advises the insurance industry in the discussion to ensure that they ‘have a story’ (read: PR) about moving in a positive direction – whilst ensuring that this story doesn’t harm their ‘bottom line.’ As ever, profits come first. 

A ‘story’ is not enough. We need those who currently hold the power to act to keep fossil fuels in the ground, and support just climate solutions. Until then, it seems we will have to carry on being ‘unreasonable.’

Updated. The decision to stop or allow the proposed 61.4 million tonne coal mine has been delayed or a second time. It is now due on or before the 8th November. (Following a first delay when the Government had said the 17th August.) We are keen to apply as much pressure to stop the mine as possible. For why this mine cannot be allowed to go ahead, see our blog post Key facts: Whitehaven coal mine.

The public inquiry into the application closed nearly a year ago (September 2021). Now we’re contending with the invasion of Ukraine, a looming energy crisis, and the closure of Port Talbot steelworks if it doesn’t receive £1.5 billion in subsidies from the government to pay for new equipment to remove its dependence on coal.

Since Liz Truss became Prime Minister there is a new Minister, Simon Clarke responsible for this decision. He is the third new holder of this role since Robert Jenrick said the government would take over the proposed Whitehaven coal mine decision in March 2021 from Cumbria County Council.

Write to your MP now to ask that they make Simon Clarke, the Secretary of State responsible for the decision, aware of your concerns.

Find out who is the MP for your area.

Below are some suggestions of points to include, please re-write them yourself and or change their order. Unique letters make a much bigger difference than reproducing the same one.

If they haven't already you could ask your MP to sign the Early Day Motion titled, “Planned coalmine in Whitehaven, Cumbria”. 51 MPs have signed so far.  Is yours one of them? Normally only opposition party MPs sign EDMs.

The invasion by Russia of Ukraine is unjust and unjustifiable. It’s logical for other governments to try to cut off the money for the Russian regime, by stopping buying Russian products including coal. The UK government has announced that it will stop buying Russian coal and oil by the end of this year and Russian gas “as soon as possible thereafter”. The European Union’s timetable is faster – no Russian coal to be bought after mid August 2022. Prior to this conflict Russia supplied around 40% of the coal consumed in European power stations and steel works.

Proponents of the proposed Whitehaven coking coal mine, are calling for the Rusisan invasion to be used to justify extracting more coal in the UK.

Update: the decision on Whitehaven by Michael Gove is now due on or before the 8th December 2022.

There has been a delay in making this decision by an additional delay of a month. This isn't the first delay to this decision, nor the first time Michael Gove, as Secretary for State for Housing Communities and Local Government, has had the power to stop this application. As he held the role in the summer before Liz Truss briefly came to power.

Several years ago West Cumbria Mining Ltd, backed by an Australian company, EMR Capital, applied to extract coal from a new underground coking coal mine under the sea by Whitehaven, Cumbria. After a legal challenge the company is seeking to extract 2.78 million tonnes of coal a year until 2049. The Secretary for State for Housing Communities and Local Government said that the UK government would decide whether this application should be allowed to go ahead which lead to a planning inquiry in September 2021. The Planning Inspector had written his report and made his recommendation by Spring 2022. The Inspectors report will be made public when Gove announces his decision.

Previously Gove’s department has said that a decision on this application will be given on or before the 17^th August 2022 after the original date of 7th July 2022 was going to be missed.

West Cumbrian Mining Ltd (WCM), the company behind the application say that if this coal were extracted 83% of the coal would be sold abroad. Only 13% of this coal is expected to be used by UK steelworks (it is coking coal, a purer coal than that normally used in power stations). On the company’s website and at the planning hearing WCM focussed on extracting coal in Cumbria and displacing coal imported to the UK from the USA, not Russia.

There are now some calls from long term proponents of the mine such as Mike Starkie, the Conservative mayor of Copeland, the constituency that includes Whitehaven, to approve this application on the basis of the Russian invasion. Others have suggest allowing the extension application at Abepergwm in order to stop the UK’s use of Russian coal. However no-one who previously thought coal at either site should stay in the ground has been convinced by this argument. The rational is misleading and counterproductive as shown in this brilliant article by Ukrainian climate activist Svitlana Romanko.

Svitlana writes, "we Ukrainians have a clear response to the fossil fuel industry and the politicians on its payroll: Do not use the pain and suffering of our people to double down on [fossil fuel] production, while deploying a “peace-washing” rhetoric that makes it seem as if you are, in fact, helping the world free itself from Russian tyranny. Fossil fuels themselves, like the missiles they finance, are weapons of mass destruction."

Comparably increasing coal production in the UK won’t impact whether or not coal is mined in Russia. There are several countries still buying large amounts of Russian coal. However, decarbonisation of the two primary steel producers – Port Talbot Steel works and Scunthorpe steelworks - will reduce coal demand significantly and reduce emissions, while keeping most steel workers in their jobs.

Additionally and crucially, the British Steel industry isn’t behind the Whitehaven proposal either:

Chris McDonald, chief executive of the Materials Processing Institute and chair of the UK Metals Council said, “I think it’s important to be clear that even if this mine opened tomorrow, it would not displace a single tonne of Russian coking coal from the UK – and I can say that with confidence”. Tata Steel already does not use any Russian coking coal. British Steel have said they can’t use the coal from Cumbria because the sulphur levels are too high. So there’s no possibility that a new mine can meaningfully displace any Russian imports.

While the end of Russian coal imports to the UK and Europe is something Coal Action Network and others have been campaigning for, we grieve for the way in which it has come about.

While the UK government may wish to hide its bad decision making behind world events, justifying a new coal mine because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine doesn’t add up. COP26 agreements need to be honoured and coal at Whitehaven needs to stay where it is – underground.