Much confusion in the reaction to the news of the UK's first new deep coalmine for 30 years

I have always felt that politicians and environmental activists seem not to realise that to attain the Paris agreement of zero carbon by 2050 will require a huge ramp up in the supply of raw materials (posting of 21 July 2019).

This is highlighted by the announcement that plans to open the UK’s first new deep coalmine in 30 years have been given the go-ahead by Councillors in Cumbria.  Unsurprisingly this has led to unthinking protests by climate campaigners, including of course Extinction Rebellion, who have argued that the new mine, which will reportedly emit 8m tonnes of carbon annually, contradicts the UK’s pledge to be carbon neutral by 2050. The local Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron called the decision “a kick in the teeth in the fight to tackle climate change” and asked the Government to reject the application. However his application has been rejected, with the local Conservative MP Trudy Harrison saying “sense has prevailed”. The Government's housing minister will now face pressure to block the plans.

It would appear that the protesters are totally unaware that West Cumbria Mining plans to mine under the seabed to extract around 2.7m tonnes of metallurgical coal annually, which is essentially, and solely, for use within industry and not for power stations. Steel and chemical factories in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire and Port Talbot are expected to utilise the mine's output, with the company arguing that the coal will replace imports and will not increase emissions because it will not be shipped over from the US, Canada, Russia and Australia. 

In expressing his dismay, Farron said that the government should “invest fully in zero-carbon energy” instead. And this is where many activists miss a very crucial point. A large wind turbine may seem very 'green' but it needs to be built, and raw materials are needed, which in themselves require large amounts of energy to produce (posting of 25 August 2019). Apart from all its other uses steel is an essential part of a turbine's construction and almost 350 tonnes are needed. The blast furnace, the first stage in the steel-making process, requires coke, produced from metallurgical coal, which is continuously fed into the furnace to provide fuel and also act as a reductant of the iron ore to pig-iron, which is then refined into steel.

In a speech given to the Conservative Party conference this month Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to make Britain the "Saudi Arabia of wind", pledging that offshore wind will produce enough electricity to power every home by 2030. This would need an offshore wind capacity of 40 gigawatts, compared with the current capacity of 10 gigawatts, and analysts have suggested that  this target would require the completion of a turbine every weekday throughout the decade- a lot of steel, as well as other raw materials.

Source: The World Bank

Interestingly at last year's Tory conference nuclear fusion was the priority and Johnson said that Britain was on the verge of creating commercially viable miniature fusion reactors for sale around the world. "I know they have been on the verge for some time,” he bumbled. “It is a pretty spacious kind of verge.” But now, he assured his audience, “we are on the verge of the verge."

And seven years ago he said that wind power "couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding" while advocating a new form of energy which would power the UK for the foreseeable future- he was talking about shale gas!

Peter Broookes, The Times, 7 October

@barrywills