I want to share with you my thoughts on a very welcome development in this, the season of good news. As many of you may already know by now, the Government has approved delayed plans for a new coking coal mine in Cumbria.
This is a ringing victory for common sense in the face of rampant climate change alarmism. It is also the culmination of a hard-fought campaign. This long-awaited decision by Communities Secretary Michael Gove follows tireless lobbying from myself and my Conservative colleagues in Copeland. I am delighted that the independent Planning Inspectorate was persuaded by the overwhelming arguments in favour of this project.
By way of background, I also want to stress that this application to open a coking coal mine at the former Woodhouse Colliery had already been approved by the Development Control and Regulation Committee three times following full and robust public consultation. Yet this hugely important investment was put at real risk by four years of flip-flopping from the Labour-led Cumbria County Council – a failing organisation that will soon be consigned to the history books as part of the local government reform process.
The formal granting of planning permission was just hours away when the local authority’s Labour-Lib Dem coalition made its short-sighted eleventh-hour decision to consider the application for Woodhouse Colliery for a fourth time. As a result of the procrastination of the county council as well as the noise generated by a very small but vocal minority of environmental zealots, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local found himself in an invidious position: and little choice but to call this in.
My own efforts have been focused on challenging misinformation about the purported impact of the mine. Much of these arguments were made by those who either failed to grasp the compelling environmental and economic arguments underpinning this development, or else deliberately misconstrued the evidence because it did not fit their narrative. I have fought these distortions in television and radio interviews, social media platforms and in debates in the House of Commons. I have made clear, for example, the difference between thermal and metallurgical coal. The coal mined from the Woodhouse Colliery will not be used for a 'dirty' coal power station. The use of coking coal is vital to steelmaking and, by extension, to the renewable energy industry; that the mine will actually help reduce the UK’s carbon footprint (mitigating the need to import coking coal vast distances).
The mine will be net carbon zero from the very beginning – making it the first of its type in the world. As part of its development there will be an additional capital investment of £15m in methane capture equipment and associated plant and equipment. I spoke in favour of the Woodhouse Colliery, as part of the Public Inquiry into West Cumbria Mining's planning application. It makes much more sense to source the coal we need locally rather than shipping it in from abroad from countries that do not have our strong environmental record. If we don’t mine coking coal here then we import it from elsewhere at the very time when we need to be reducing our dependence on other countries.
There is no commercial alternative to coking coal in some parts of the steel-making process, and current large-scale trials for substitution relate only to one part of the process. Electric arc furnace technology does not remove the requirement for coking coal – either in new steel or in wholly recycled steel, and expert reports commissioned by all sides in the planning application attest to that. While the coking coal from Whitehaven is destined for steelmaking, it is also worth pointing out that UK usage of coking coal is much wider, from cement production to electric vehicle car batteries – and even the electrodes for the electric arc furnaces.
The mine will see the direct creation of 532 well paid and skilled jobs on site with this project, with 80 per cent of these expected to come from within 20 miles of the project site Woodhouse Colliery. The mine itself will make £1.8bn contribution to UK Gross domestic product (GDP) in the first 10 years, £2.5bn worth of exports and would deliver a 1.8 per cent reduction in the UK balance of trade deficit over the same period. It will see £130 million annual project spend in the region each year when in full production, and a £500m tax contribution to Government in first 10 years.
