See our English language version of this webpage.
Mae Cymru ar fin penderfynu a ddylid ehangu pwll glo brig mwyaf y DU gan bron i 4 blynedd a 2 filiwn tunnell o lo. Bydd hyn yn gyrru newid hinsawdd gan bron i 6 miliwn tunnell o CO2 a 16,000 tunnell o fethan.
Mae pwll glo Ffos-y-fran ym Merthyr Tudful sy’n chwalu’r hinsawdd yn echdynnu hyd at 50,000 tunnell o lo bob mis – sef glo y dyfarnodd Llys Cyfiawnder Ewrop ei fod yn creu gormod o lygredd i’w losgi yn hen orsaf bŵer Aberddawan, ac sydd bellach yn cael ei losgi’n bennaf mewn gwaith dur. Mae hyn yn rhwymo gwaith dur TATA i fod yr 2il safle mwyaf llygredig yn y DU!
Mae deisebwyr yn mynnu bod Llywodraeth Cymru:
Pam mae hyn yn bwysig?
Pan roddwyd caniatâd gan Lywodraeth Cymru yn 2005, cafodd y gymuned leol ym Merthyr Tudful, a oedd wedi brwydro’n ffyrnig yn erbyn y cynnig, addewid y byddai mwyngloddio’n dod i ben ar ôl 15 mlynedd, ar 6ed Medi 2022 ac y byddai’r gwaith o adfer y tir wedi’i gwblhau ychydig flynyddoedd yn ddiweddarach. Ond adroddir nad yw mwyngloddio glo wedi dod i ben, gan ddifetha’r heddwch hir-ddisgwyliedig i’r gymuned leol sy’n gallu gweld a chlywed y pwll glo o’u cartrefi. Ac yn awr mae'r cwmni mwyngloddio wedi gwneud cais i ehangu'r pwll glo am 9 mis, ac wedi dweud y bydd yn ceisio am 3 blynedd arall o gloddio am lo, (a phwy a ŵyr beth y tu hwnt i hynny...?).
Bydd hyn nid yn unig yn hybu newid yn yr hinsawdd gan bron i 6 miliwn tunnell o CO2 a 16,000 tunnell o fethan, ond hefyd yn achosi dioddefaint i’r trigolion cyfagos trwy’r ffrwydradau pellach, llygredd sŵn a llwch. Ar ben hyn, bydd y gwaith adfer hir-ddisgwyliedig ar y tir yn cael ei wthio yn ôl gan flynyddoedd, gyda phryderon na fydd byth yn digwydd.
Sut y cyflwynir y ddeiseb
Bydd y ddeiseb hon yn cael ei chyflwyno i Julie James, Gweinidog Newid Hinsawdd Cymru.
See our Welsh language version of this webpage.
Wales is about to decide whether to expand the UK’s largest opencast coal mine by nearly 4 years, emitting almost 6 million tonnes of CO2, and 16,000 tonnes of methane from the coal mine itself.
The climate-trashing Ffos-y-fran coal mine in Merthyr Tydfil extracts up to 50,000 tonnes of coal every month – coal that the European Court of Justice ruled was too polluting to be burned in the old Aberthaw power station, and is now burned mainly at steelworks. This locks TATA steelworks into being the UK’s 2nd most polluting site!
We demand that the Welsh Government:
When permission was granted by the Welsh Government in 2005, the local community in Merthyr Tydfil, who had fought the proposal fiercely, were promised that mining would end after 15 years, in September 2022 and that restoration of the land would be complete by the end of the following year. Yet it’s reported that coal mining hasn’t stopped, ruining the long-awaited peace for the local community who can see and hear the coal mine from their homes. And now the mining company has applied to expand the coal mine by 9 months, and has said it will for a further 3 years of coal mining, (and who knows what beyond that...?).
This will not only fuel climate change by almost 6 million tonnes of CO2, but inflict explosive further blasting, noise and dust pollution on nearby residents. On top of this, the long-awaited restoration of the land, will be pushed back by years, with concerns that it will never happen.
We sometimes hear from people that they are worried coal may be a necessary evil to keep us warm this winter. But the worst effects of this energy crisis was, and to some extent is, avoidable. Low-hanging fruit include home insulation, community-owned renewable energy generation, and an effective windfall tax on profiteering energy companies. These measures can be rapidly deployed, and we’ve seen from Covid what the Government can achieve big changes when there is political will to. Coal is not, and for the sake of our future, cannot be, the answer to how keep warm this winter. That is why half the demands of the Warm This Winter campaign centre around renewable energy and excluding fossil fuels as the way we will access affordable energy this winter and in future years.
The Warm This Winter campaign’s 3rd demand is access to cheaper energy—“Clean, renewable energy is now nine times cheaper than gas and can be brought online quickly”. Subsidy-free solar, in particular, has been demonstrated as cheaper than its fossil fuel alternatives. Prices have fallen dramatically for renewable energy since introduction – whereas fossil fuels continue to rely on huge Government subsidies, infrastructure, and underwriting of risk.
The 4th demand of the Warm This Winter campaign is to cut out fossil fuels as “it keeps us locked into an unaffordable energy for far longer than necessary”. The UK Government sells our natural resources to companies that extract it and sell it back to us at unaffordable prices to generate huge profits for themselves—never more so than in 2022.
The energy crisis has created a swing in vocal public support for coal mining since the energy crisis, and with it, political support for coal mine applications has grown in the highest echelons of Government. The Government has sent mixed signals recently on whether it will approve or reject the Whitehaven coal mine application, which has now been delayed by a further month to before the 9th December 2022.
It is particularly clear that the Government is using the energy crisis as an excuse to abandon its climate commitments wholesale since it’s citing the energy crisis for renewing its support for coal mine applications… that have nothing to do with power generation. All the current coal mine applications are to mine coal for industry—not power generation.
The Government will hand over £420 million in tax money to profiteering energy companies to keep old coal power stations, like West Burton, and coal units, like Drax, chugging along this winter. These power stations and units were scheduled for closure in 2022, but now these dirty, dusty relics will be stoked with thousands of tonnes of imported coal, paid for with our taxes. In fact this move is expected to generate so much pollution that the Government has instructed the Environment Agency to ignore its responsibility to enforce pollution limits when it comes to coal fired energy production this winter. People living locally to these power stations will pay the price in potentially dangerously poor air quality, but we will all pay the price in our taxes and in our future compromised by the climate change a reliance on coal fuels.
Rolling out home insulation tackles the energy crisis and bills not just this year, but for many years to come—and the impact is immediate. It would also help the Government get back on track with its climate commitments as housing is responsible for 19% of the UK’s carbon emissions. This should be a top priority for Government in tackling the cost-of-living crisis and energy crisis together this winter.
In 2012, the UK insulated 2.3 million loft or cavity walls. But a shift in Government policy saw uptake drop by 90%. This Government decision to cut support for home insulation after 2012 has cost taxpayers, like me and you, £1 billion in energy bills this year. If the Government had maintained the same level of support, nearly 50% of UK homes could have been insulated by now. A more recent scheme by the UK Government collapsed, and was blasted by the Audit Office for being “botched”. This would have significantly reduced the energy crisis this winter, along with our bills. Households living in homes with poor efficiency ratings will pay around £1000 more this winter.
The British public overwhelmingly support the rollout of renewables, with 78% supporting solar power, 75% offshore wind, and 70% onshore wind. Unlike non-renewable sources of power like nuclear power stations, renewable energy infrastructure can be rapidly scaled up and brought online. With clear public support, the Government could rapidly accelerate renewable energy roll-out that isn’t vulnerable to shifts in geopolitics and global supply chains.
Because renewable energy is modular—one wind turbine or one solar panel can be bought and set up, or 1000s—its more affordable for communities buy their own equipment and become power generators, with the profits returning to those communities rather than disappearing into the pockets of big business. The Government acknowledges the value of community-owned renewable energy, but isn’t doing enough to encourage it. Instead, the Government dropped the Social Investment Tax Relief for community energy and has failed to provide the financial guarantees it provides to other energy projects like nuclear power stations. If the UK faced this winter with a resilient network of renewable energy zones, our dependence on gas and fossil fuels would have been much lower, and energy prices would be more insulated from Russian sanctions, geopolitics, and global demand and supply shifts.
The Government imposed a windfall tax in May 2022 as a one-off tax on the record profits made by energy companies that are due to lifted Covid restrictions and supply concerns around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, BBC reported: “BP reported its biggest quarterly profit for 14 years, making £6.9bn in the three months to June. Shell recorded even higher second quarter profits of £9bn and made £8.2bn in the following three months. The majority of the April to June takings won't be hit by the government's windfall tax, as it only applies from 26 May”. The Guardian reported “Shell has paid zero windfall tax in the UK despite making record global profits of nearly $30bn (£26bn) so far this year”. Yet the Government has resisted pressure to tax these record profits and redistribute to cushion energy prices, so less of the UK have to choose between food and heating this winter.
Rich Felgate’s film FINITE: The Climate of Change, features the Campaign to Protect Pont Valley and the occupation of the Hambacher forest. It shows how, through relentless campaigning, direct action and creative protest, concerned people stopped destruction of the remaining Hambacher forest in the Rhineland, Germany. The forest was being consumed for RWE’s brown opencast coal mine. FINITE also follows opposition to the Banks Group’s opencast coal mine in the Pont Valley, Durham, UK. The Pont Valley Protection Camp started opposing the coal mine plans in early 2018.
FINITE is available to rent or buy online worldwide on Vimeo On Demand!
Numerous applications to extract coal from the Pont Valley via opencast coal methods were rejected for over 30 years by the local council, before UK Coal were given planning permission after a second planning appeal, in June 2015, although the company had gone bankrupt. Banks Group took over the license to extract coal for power stations in early 2018 and rushed to remove the first coal before the planning permission lapsed on the 3rd June 2018.
Local people, some living just 300m from the site’s perimeter, alongside activists from across Europe, set up a protest camp in February 2018 during the ‘Beast from the East’ snow storm. This action was taken just after the coal company felled an ancient hedgerow that ran through the proposed site.
UK Coal’s ecologists had found protected great crested newts on the opencast site and had promised to relocate them, to ponds in the north of the site built for this purpose. Banks Group’s ecologist, in a rush to extract coal before the deadline, conveniently found no newts at all living on the site. The assertion that there were no newts was challenged by everyone who knew the Brooms pond area well. Newts were a central theme in the campaign to stop the mine.
The Campaign to Protect Pont Valley was led by people living in the three villages surrounding the opencast site. The film shows some of the many court hearings, protests, direct action, and a private prosecution for wildlife crimes.
FINITE shows some of the victories from this campaign. The strong resistance to the opencast in the Pont Valley showed that new opencasts are unwanted and irresponsible in the face of the serious impacts from climate change already being felt. This meant that extracting 3 million tonnes of coal from a proposed opencast coal mine near Druridge Bay, in Northumberland, was rejected by central government at the end of 2020. A proposed opencast coal mine at Dewley Hill on the outskirts of Newcastle was also turned down by the planning committee of Newcastle Council in December 2020. Both of these proposals were submitted by Banks Group, who were targetted by campaigners against coal in the Pont Valley.
Although there is very little UK mining happening right now coal mining remains legal. There is currently a proposal for a new underground coal mine at Whitehaven, Cumbria, which was given permission to start in December 2022, but faces legal challenges. There is also an extension proposed to the operating underground coal mine at Aberpergwm, Neath Port Talbot, which is subject to a legal challenge by Coal Action Network.
The tactics used against Banks Group and RWE, shown in FINITE, are applicable against many other extractive industries and unsustainable projects worldwide. Less than 2 miles from where Banks Group opencast mined the Pont Valley now lies Derwentside detention centre. Tactics used in the Pont Valley are now being deployed against this detention centre for asylum seekers, which opened in 2021.
The policing seen in FINITE is familiar to many who fight for social change, and shocking to many who are not yet involved. The interactions between police and protestors in the Pont Valley lead to an academic article, Police and Private Security Responses to the Campaign to Protect Pont Valley Against Opencast Coal Extraction. Even at a low level, the police continue to support the actions of those with money, pursuing projects which are known to cause harm.
FINITE touches on the death of Waka, a much loved part of the Campaign to Protect Pont Valley who was killed fighting for Kurdish freedom by ISIS and Steffan, an embedded journalist documenting the struggle in the Hambacher Forest, killed by the police.
Share the film on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
An underlying message in the film is that the power of coal, as well as the actual resource, is finite—but the energy and passion of the activist movement is relentless. Together we can turn things around and build a system that puts biodiversity and people beyond profit. It’s time to get active.
Today (Sat 15th 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.
Ffos-y-fran (pronounced in English as Foss-uh-vran and also known as the 'Ffos-y-Fran Land Reclamation Scheme') is a large opencast coal mine in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, mining primarily thermal coal. Mining company Merthyr Ltd (previously, Miller Argent) was awarded planning permission in February 2005 on appeal and began opencast coal mining. Planning permission for the opencast coal mining came to an end on 06th September 2022 (confirmed by Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council to Coal Action Network under a Freedom of Information request).
The two planning conditions that Merthyr Ltd are pressuring the Council to throw out are:
Merthyr Ltd want to delay its restoration responsibility and extend mining its dirty coal from the Ffos-y-fran opencast initially by 9 months (06 June 2023), but then by a further 3 years. The 9 month extension is to give the coal operator enough time to mine a further 240,000 tonnes of coal and submit an application for a 3 year extension but during this time, it’ll be mining as much coal as it can. See all the application documents at P/22/0237.
So, how does Merthyr Ltd seek to justify breaking its promise to the Council and local communities to restore and end opencast coal mining?
In a personally signed letter to the Council, Merthyr Ltd’s Director, David Lewis, claims production was reduced due to lockdowns so not all the coal could be mined in the void that was expected to be by the deadline of the 06 September 2022, so a time extension should be awarded to “ensure the full reserve can be realised”.
There are two issues with the justification attempted in Lewis’s letter:
Via repeated Freedom of Information Requests, Coal Action Network eventually succeeded in forcing the Council admit only £15 million had been deposited by Merthyr Ltd into the escrow account for restoration. In 2018, restoration was estimated to cost £62 million, meaning there is roughly a £47 million shortfall (depending on how much of the site has been restored alongside coal mining since 2018). This is shortfall is highlighted by Merthyr Ltd in its Planning Statement for the time extension: “As the Council is fully aware, there are insufficient funds within the Escrow and restoration fund to allow for the full and successful implementation of the current restoration strategy for the site.”
Merthyr Ltd’s solution is “that the additional time to finish extraction and restoration will enable a more sustainable and modernised restoration scheme”. Although Merthyr Ltd promised to fund and carry out a restoration strategy as a condition to it gaining planning permission, the company now uses its failure to fulfil this condition as a reason to let it mine more coal. And by “modernised”, Merthyr Ltd almost certainly mean cheaper restoration scheme.
Merthyr Ltd transferred most the of the land ownership to Geraint Morgan Legacy Limited of which David Lewis is the sole Director. If the Council attempts to recover the £47 million shortfall for restoration, and Merthyr Ltd cannot pay, responsibility may lie with the landowner, which appears from its Companies House records to only have £2 million in the bank. Merthyr Ltd may reap the profits from years of mining, and the Council could be face bankruptcy to pay the remaining shortfall for restoration.
Similar situations have been seen with other mining companies (most notoriously by Celtic Energy) holding Councils to ransom for permitting more coal mining by threatening to fold or transferring the liability to shell companies, knowing Councils can’t afford to fund the massive costs involved in restoring ex-coal mining sites.
Merthyr Ltd have known for years that planning permission at Ffos-y-fran would expire on 06 September 2022, yet attempts to leverage the fact that it has seemingly failed to support its workers to reskill or find alternative employment as a reason to extend the planning permission: “…it will ensure that current employees have a further 9 months to weather the cost of living crisis and look for alternative means of employment” (Planning Statement).
Incredulously, Merthyr Ltd even goes beyond this neglect towards its workers, to use its own lack of business strategy as it approached the known end of planning permission as a rationale for permitting the initial 9 month extension to allow “…the operators of the mine to look at other investment possibilities.”
Merthyr Ltd’s Planning Statement attempts the justification commonly used be coal mining companies in the UK: “The transport emissions for each tonne of UK coal delivered to Port Talbot are typically five times lower than coal imported from abroad” and therefore, less CO2 is emitted overall if coal is mined and used in the UK. This argument relies on the idea that more coal mining in the UK would displace the same amount of coal being mined in another country, and the coal mined in the UK would be used in the UK.
Coal-laden HGV leaving the Ffos-y-fran opencast coal mine on 13/09/2022
Coal operators are notorious for making lofty claims about the unrivalled quality of coal they would mine—this is to circumvent the presumption against new coal extraction in planning decisions, hoping to fit into the loophole made for exceptional need and economic value.
Merthyr Ltd has rebranded its thermal coal as “dry steam coal”, a term that doesn’t seem to be widely used by anyone except Merthyr Ltd and its trade customers. In reality, this is just thermal coal, and used to be primarily sold to RWE’s Aberthaw coal-fired power station. However, Aberthaw had to stop burning coal from Ffos-y-fran to generate electricity because the European Court of Justice ruled the toxic nitrogen oxides it emitted were too high.
With the loss of this customer, Merthyr Ltd invested £10 million in machinery to refine some of its lower grade coal to ‘metallurgical’ coal that could be used in steelworks in 2015.
Merthyr Ltd has clearly been studying other coal mine applications in the planning system, and likewise in its Planning Statement emphasises Port Talbot Steelworks’ reliance on coal, claiming its thermal coal is needed in the vaguely worded “steel manufacturing process”.
Like most coal operators, Merthyr Ltd (and former coal operators) like to change the rules along the way. The original coal operator agreed to all the conditions attached to the original planning permission in 2005, but in 2008, the coal operator wanted to rip up condition 37 requiring col to leave the site by freight train. The coal operator applied for a 'S73' change to use HGVs to transport 100,000 tonnes of coal each year by road, rather than rail. The company pragmatically reduced this to 50,000 tonnes but HGVs loaded with coal on the roads is dirty and dangerous, so the Council rejected the attempt to change this condition. The company didn’t accept this, and won the right to change this condition on appeal in May 2011 (APP/U6925/A/10/2129921)
Merthyr Ltd want to change the rules again with this 'S73' application for a time extension to mine more coal and delay the promised restoration. Each time the coal operators change the rules, it’s inevitably the local communities living in Merthyr Tydfil that pay the price. Enough is enough.
Bryn Bach Coal Ltd submitted an application in 2019 to expand the existing Glan Lash opencast coal mine by 6.68 hectares (originally 7.98 hectares) with the site boundary at 10.03 hectares. The coal operator wants to extract a further 95,038 tonnes of coal (originally 110,000 tonnes, and represents more than the original coal mine licenced for just 92,500 tonnes) over 6.1 years (planning ref. E/39917). This amounts to around 325 tonnes/week. The Standard Mineral Application Form submitted to Carmarthenshire County Council is only partially filled out. There is a pending call-in request (from 03/01/2020) to the Welsh Ministers to determine this application. It could be quashed by Ministers (as of 27/07/2022, the Welsh Ministers are waiting on the Local Planning Authority Officer's report).
There are many calls to reject the proposed expansion on the grounds of climate change, citing Planning Policy Wales (Edition 10). But Llandybie Community Council and Councillor Davies support it—citing jobs, community fund, and repeating the company’s claims of low climate change impact.
Based on the planning permission issued on 25 January 2012, coal mining was to cease by the end of 2016 and progressively restored, with completed restoration by the end of December 2017, followed by a 5-year aftercare period. However, as so often happens, this promised restoration has yet to even be started. Bryn Bach Coal Ltd submitted a Section 73 time-extension application to delay restoration works, which the Council permitted ahead of the coal operator submitted an application to extend mining. As a consequence, the local community has suffered an unrestored coal mine on their doorsteps for almost 5 years whilst the mining extension application is considered. To add insult to this injury, Bryn Bach Coal Ltd also write in their environmental impact assessment (EIA) that the extension applied for would “enable the full restoration of the existing and the proposed extension”, making the completion of the previously promised restoration now appear dependent on profits from the extension—not dissimilar from the narrative in Celtic Energy Ltd’s extension applications.
Bryn Bach Coal Ltd claim Glan Lash produces ‘premium quality anthracite’, without parallel in South Wales—a suspiciously similar claim is also made by EnergyBuild Ltd about their Aberpergwm deep coal mine in South Wales.
Despite admitting that 50% (which the company recently changed to 25% in 2022, without explanation or evidence) of the coal mined would be burned for domestic heating, and failing to account for what percentage is destined for other uses, Bryn Bach Coal Ltd haughtily claim in their EIA “that to refuse planning permission based on the impact our proposal will have on Climate Change and Carbon Emissions would be globally irresponsible.”
Bryn Bach Coal Ltd does not determine global coal market conditions and cannot predict demand of different industries. Ultimately, the company will sell to whoever wants the coal and is offering the highest price for it. There will be nothing in the planning permission that controls how the coal is consumed. Bryn Bach Coal Ltd's claims around this may well just be an attempt to make the mine seem more acceptable to Planning Councillors and the public - don't fall for it.
Council commissioned the independent reviews of the technical reports paid for, and submitted by, Bryn Bach Coal Ltd on how the coal mine extension would impact water flows (hydrology) and the ecology reliant on that in the area. An independent Planning Ecology report in July 2022 recommends rejection of the application to fulfil the Council’s duty to “maintain and enhance biodiversity under Section 6 of the Environment (Wales) Act 2016, Section 6.4.21 of Planning Policy Wales or under Well-being Goal Two of the Well-being and Future Generations Act 2015 (AResilient Wales)”, and points out “documentation provided by the applicant is misleading in places as it makes frequent reference to the restoration of habitats”. In a letter to the Council, Friends of the Earth Cymru precede this independent Ecology Planning report’s conclusions by pointing out that “While mitigation is proposed in the form of restoration and replanting, these trees and associated landscape proposals will take years to grow back to current levels, and existing habitats may not recover”.
The 2018 EIA report paid for by the coal operator, Bryn Bach Coal Ltd, identifies that ancient woodland extends 2.52 hectares inside the site boundary, which would be at risk if the extension goes ahead, but claim the woodland should not be categorised as ancient woodland. The ecologists refute the 2011 classification by Countryside Council for Wales and Forestry Commission Wales, by citing a more obscure historic 1988 source that does not list it as ‘ancient woodland’. In a more recent EIA report by Pryce Ecologists, they stopped using the downgraded term ‘historic woodland’ and stuck to the correct ‘ancient woodland’ classification. This is reinforced by the July 2022 independent Planning Ecology report citing the woodland to be “circa 120 years old” and “cannot be compensated for by the creation of new woodland within a 17-year timeframe”. This is in direct contraction to what was claimed by the Pryce Ecologists EIA report paid for by Bryn Bach Coal Ltd. The independent report goes on to say it would take 120 years for the newly planted woodland to support the same biodiversity, by which time the existing woodland would be 240 years old if it wasn’t removed, and therefore probably still ahead in biodiversity. The independent report is also critical of the 2018 EIA report as ‘The applicant has incorrectly assessed that none of the hedgerows on the site are “important”’, arguing the loss of these hedgerows should be a ‘material consideration when considering this planning application’, particularly as the restoration plan’s “amount of new hedgerow planting is well below the 2:1 ratio associated with habitat compensation and habitat loss” and “40-50% of this planting is in positions where it will contribute little to biodiversity”.
The independent hydrology review commissioned by Council is highly critical of the reports provided by Bryn Bach Coal Ltd, with specific criticisms like “it is my very strong opinion that the information provided is insufficient”, “here appears to have been a complete absence of research on the hydrological management of abandoned mine workings in the area”, and “unsafe assumption[s]”, “I disagree entirely with this statement, and find it hard to understand how the reported data collection exercise could have informed the understanding of whether the marshy grassland is groundwater-dependent to any degree”. Lambasting one of the most recent hydrology reports by Humphries and Leverton in 2022 (again commissioned by Bryn Bach Coal Ltd), the independent review claims “it is based on a wholly inadequate ecohydrological conceptual model, the central limitation being an extremely poor understanding of the hydrogeology of the area … I am strongly of the opinion that the information provided is not sufficient to enable the Local Authority to determine whether or not the proposals will cause significant ecohydrological impacts”. In relation to the restoration plan, the review highlights that the “current claim that sequential backfilling of mined areas will completely restore the original hydrology as the workings move from west to east is, in my opinion, unsafe.”
As a statutory consultant, Neil Bateman responded to the extension application by pointing out that the Planning Policy Wales 10 (para. 5.10.14-15) applies in this case: “Proposals for opencast, deep-mine development or colliery spoil disposal should not be permitted…” (although acknowledging there is ambiguity about whether this applies extensions or only new coal mines). Bateman also highlights that the Minerals Technical Advice Note 2, para. 29 states “coal working will generally not be acceptable within 500 metres (m) of settlements”. The nearest settlement to the extension would be 440 metres, 60 metres less than the stipulation in this policy.
Bryn Bach Coal Ltd is the coal mining company that operates the Glan Lash opencast coal mine, which has been dormant since planning permission expired in 2019. In 2018, it applied for an extension which was unanimously rejected by planning councillors in 2023. Undeterred, Bryn Bach Coal Ltd is trying again! This time with a slightly smaller extension of some 85,000 tonnes rather than 95,000 tonnes. Check out the company's application and public responses so far.
Coal to be sold: 85,000 tonnes in total – average of 328 tonnes per week
CO2: Approximately 271,000 tonnes of CO2 in total (2024 BEIS Conversion Factors)
Methane: ~659 tonnes in total - circa108 tonnes each year.
Coal operator: Bryn Bach Coal Ltd – since grant of planning permission January 2012 - 2019
Type: Anthracite coal
Mining method: Opencast
Purported destination: Brake pads, water filtration, brick colourant etc.
Local Planning Authority: Carmarthenshire County Council
Address: Glan Lash Mine Site, Shands Road, Llandybie, Blaenau, Carmarthenshire SA18 3NA
Physical size: 10.03 hectares, with a void of 5.92 hectares (extended void = roughly 11 football pitches)
Time: 5.4 years of coal extraction, 7 years of all works on the site
Published: 15/10/2024
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.
Some things to consider in your letter to your MP:
1) The only significant domestic demand for Whitehaven’s coal would be Port Talbot Steelworks (at most, 13% of the coal produced could be consumed in the UK at full production). Port Talbot Steelworks has announced it will either cut out coal from its steelworks with a £1.5 billion government subsidy – or close. Either way, close to 100% of Whitehaven coal would be exported where it doesn’t get included in UK emissions statistics, but does worsen everyone’s climate risk.
2) The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is a good reason to lead the way in reducing our industries’ dependence on fossil fuels, starting with Port Talbot Steelworks, and embrace the massive potential for renewable energy across the UK. Much can be done just by increasing efficiencies, see our report on Coal in steel.
3) Chris McDonald of the Materials Processing Institute has said that the Whitehaven mine would not displace a single tonne of Russian coking coal from the UK. The industry’s trade association—UK Steel - has confirmed that no Russian coal is used in UK steelworks any more; these plants have already found alternative sources.
4) The UK holds the COP (climate summit) presidency until the end of 2022, the UK needs to set an example by keeping all fossil fuels in the ground. Lord Deben, of the Climate Change Committee, said in June 2022 "As far as the coal mine in Cumbria is concerned, let's be absolutely clear, it is absolutely indefensible".
5) The cost of living crisis means that we need to invest in technology and industries which can offer sustainable, well paid, long-term employment, building a greener country—rather than investing in a declining industry at a coal mine with an uncertain future. The Local Government Association, says there is potential for over 6000 green jobs in Cumbria this decade of which 10% of these could be in Copeland, where the Whitehaven coal mine would be.
You can also include reasons against this coal mine which are not on this list, but important to you. Remember it would produce coal for steel making, rather than for coal power stations. Please remember to include a full name and address.
Particularly important Ministers to contact are: Alok Sharma, Reading West; Simon Clarke, Middlesborough South and East Cleveland; Kwasi Kwarteng, Spelthorne; Greg Hands, Chelsea and Fulham; Paul Scully, Sutton & Cheam; Marcus Jones, Nuneaton; Lia Nici, Great Grimsby; Steve Double, St Austell and Newquay; and Alan Mak, Havant, Hampshire. However, only the MP for the area that you live will correspond with you on this issue.
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.
Consultation question: Considering the information presented in this call for evidence paper, and your own knowledge and experience, what are your views on the extraction of coal in Scotland?
Our response: The Welsh Government's most recent policy statement on coal should provide a starting point for the Scottish Government to build upon (https://gov.wales/coal-policy-statement-html) in developing its own policy, as there are clear and relevant parallels between both Governments.
Both Wales and Scotland has a long legacy of suffering the localised impacts of environmental blight and hazardous conditions of coal mining, with nearby communities rarely seeing a significant share of the economic benefits. Wales is still littered with unrestored or poorly restored coal mines. It was reported that only this year are the final abandoned coal mines in Scotland being restored - again, often to revised, lower standards that what was promised nearby communities due to insufficient restoration bonds.
Now more is known about climate change, both Wales and Scotland have led the way in developing progressive policies and practice to realise their ambitious targets. This cannot include viably include coal, which is worse in CO2 emissions than natural gas and oil in its conversion factor to energy. The EIA Pathways to Net-Zero report make this very clear, underscoring that no new coal mining for any purpose can be part of a pathway to Net-Zero by 2050.
A critical part of that report is no new coal mining for any purpose. The report goes further to explicitly include coking coal for steel in this prohibition. Port Talbot Steelworks in South Wales and British Steel in England are the 2nd and 3rd largest single-site sources of CO2 in the UK - because they burn coal. Any policy that differentiates between the extraction of coal for energy production and coal for steel production, ignores this growing threat to meeting climate targets across the world. It would also ignore the rapidly escalating developments around the world in decarbonising the steel industry. Green steel is on its way, with the first delivery of commercial quantities made from Sweden in 2021. Unfortunately, once investors have opened a coal mine, they will seek return on that investment and find alternative markets for the coal, or laggard steelworks that still rely on coal in the future. So permitting new coal mining for steel will prop up the biggest polluters and discourage transition to new technology and practices.
There is no viable future for any of us that relies on coal to get us there. Scotland should be using its just transition fund to skill its inhabitants in the industries of the future, not ploughing people into the industries that destroy that future.
