Was scrapping the proposed coal mine in Cumbria the right decision?

Plans to build the UK's first deep coal mine in more than 30 years have been quashed. after two campaign groups brought legal action over the previous government's decision to grant planning permission for the site near Whitehaven in Cumbria. They claimed the government did not take into consideration the environmental impact of burning the coal extracted but lawyers for West Cumbria Mining said there had been "repeated mischaracterisation" of the plans and the development would have a "broadly neutral effect on the global release of greenhouse gas".

Source: Coal Action Network

Reacting to the High Court judgement, former Conservative MP for Workington, Mark Jenkinson, said the project would have created "well paid jobs" and "huge opportunities for the local supply chain, "If we don't mine coking coal here - which is required for our steel industry, among others, for the foreseeable future - then we import it from countries like Russia." He said that "there is nothing on the horizon" to replace coking coal in the process for making steel,

West Cumbria Mining planned to mine under the seabed to extract around 2.7m tonnes of metallurgical coal annually, solely for use within industry and not for power stations. Approval for the mine was given in December 2022 and although the coal would not be used for power generation critics say the mine would undermine climate targets and the demand for coking coal is declining. 

Supporters claimed that the mine would create jobs and reduce the need to import coal. However there is now a strong argument that there is no significant need for the coal in the UK as the blast furnaces in Port Talbot, Wales, have been shut down by the owners. Tata Steel, in favour of electric arc furnaces. These, however, will not produce 'virgin steel' from iron ore but will be used to melt and recycle scrap.

It may seem paradoxical, but mining of coal is essential in the quest for a zero-carbon society. Metallurgical coal, which would be mined in Cumbria, is required to produce steel, but it is rarely appreciated that fossil fuels, whether from coal or gas, will also be needed for some time yet, in order to help build the electric vehicles and wind turbines of the future. There just aren't enough renewable sources of energy at present to provide the energy to mine and extract the necessary raw materials and to manufacture the multitude of renewable energy devices and electric vehicles which are proposed. The most essential material is steel, the ubiquitous alloy used in construction. A single wind-turbine, for instance, requires well over 300 tonnes of steel, and to make steel we need metallurgical coal from which we produce coke for the iron blast furnaces.

Although environmental considerations are driving the introduction of new technologies, blast furnace related technologies for the production of pig-iron are still by far the most common methods for ironmaking and are predicted to be the single largest process until 2050. The blast furnace is reliant on a plentiful supply of coke, the hot air blast oxidising the coke to carbon monoxide, which reduces the iron ore, hematite, to pig-iron, containing around 4% carbon. Liquid pig-iron is then refined in oxygen converters, which reduce the carbon content to a value dependent on the use for the steel, 'mild steel', which is used for general engineering applications, having a carbon content of round 0.2%.

It is unlikely that technologies that do not use liquid pig iron will dominate in the coming decades, and ore, coal and limestone will remain the main raw materials used to make pig-iron. Existing technologies that produce liquid pig-iron outside the blast furnace are considerably inferior to blast furnace smelting with respect to productivity and integral total fuel consumption, which includes the fuel costs incurred to produce coke, agglomerated ore-bearing materials, hot blast air, and oxygen. The blast furnace process is also the leading technology in terms of the scale of production and has the lowest production costs. It remains the most effective thermal heat transfer reactor for ironmaking and metallurgical coal remains essential for iron and steelmaking. 

The transition to a low-carbon world does, however, require a transformation in the way iron and steel are produced and direct reduction of iron ore with hydrogen is perhaps the most promising. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe, and although it is present in its elemental form in stars, it is always found combined with other elements on earth, such that its production can be expensive. 

Hydrogen can be produced through several methods, each requiring energy to drive the chemical reaction to isolate hydrogen from, most commonly, water, coal, methane, or ammonia. Around 95% of hydrogen at present comes from fossil fuels, the remainder being the more attractive 'green hydrogen' which is produced by electrolysing water, which is expensive and requires a great deal of energy, preferably supplied by renewable sources. Green hydrogen can be used to 'store' energy, wind turbines, for instance, being used to electrolyse water when they are not needed for power generation, such as at night.

The green transition is not straightforward, and it is evident that fossil fuels will be needed for some time yet. So the question here is, was it the right decision to quash the Cumbrian coal mining application, given that the UK requirements for metallurgical coal have decreased? Or should we mine it, as it can be exported to countries which do need it, creating jobs in the process?