Should we carry coals from Newcastle? (Northumberland actually)

This is the first in what might be an occasional series in which I ask a question in the manner of a psychometric test. Note your answer, read the blog and then check whether you would still give the same answer. Like a psychometric test there is no "right" answer but the answers can still be revealing.

Today's question is: should we allow any more coal mines to be built in the UK? You can choose between strongly disagree, disagree, no opinion, agree, strongly agree.

The government now faces a tricky planning decision. No, not the Desmond London docklands housing project which Jenrick got into difficulties over, but a proposed open cast coal mine in Northumberland. The Highthorn project was approved by the local council, having been backed by both Labour and Conservative elected officials, in 2015. Their decision was backed by the national planning inspector, who concluded that the benefits of the scheme would clearly outweigh the likely adverse impacts. Sajid Javid, then Housing  and Communities Secretary, rejected the report and blocked the development. The company behind the scheme, Banks Mining, went to the High Court where the judge quashed Javid's ruling, declaring that his reasons, based on greenhouse gas emissions, were 'significantly inadequate' and that the Secretary of State had provided  neither evidence for his conclusion or by what reasoning he had arrived at it. Javid did not comply with the judgement before being moved. His successor, James Brokenshire, also prevaricated. It is now on the desk of Robert Jenrick, who was in a great hurry to approve the notorious scheme in London's docklands. But on this matter Jenrick, whose officials promised an answer by April, has so far avoided taking a decision, blaming covid when that has not changed any of the evidence.

What covid has done, however, is accentuate the jobs issue, the prime minister having committed to 'build, build, build'. Banks Mining, part of a diverse energy group which also operates 14 wind farms, was established in 1976. It has operated 115 surface mines in the north of England and employs 250 people. But not for much longer if this scheme does not proceed as next month they are due to close their (and England's) last one.

Burning coal is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and all sorts of other pollutants. The area where arguably the UK has made most progress on emissions is weaning itself off coal-fired power stations. So surely this decision is a "no brainer" as they say as coal mines are a bad thing? Well no, it isn't.

If we are going to "build, build, build" we will need steel, cement and bricks, the production of all of which currently requires coal. Soon there will be no coal-fired power stations left in the UK, a position I have looked forward to since the 1980s. But we still need five to six million tonnes of coal a year for the UK’s steel, cement and other industrial use. The high quality raw steel made in the UK cannot be made without coal and coke used in blast furnaces. In time that might change but not in the immediate future. Other UK coal customers include breweries, heritage railways, paper mills, sugar manufacturers, large commercial greenhouses and smokeless briquette manufacturers. Last year 86% of our coal came from overseas, over a third of it from Russia with some coming from Australia and the USA. Deciding not to extract coal ourselves, probably to higher environmental standards than in other countries does not reduce greenhouse gas emissions: transportation increases it.

But what about the UK's net zero carbon target? I defer to Dieter Helm, Oxford University's Professor of Energy Policy, just as I generally used to when we were both much younger and I worked in the same subject area in the 1980s:

"The story of the past 20 years is that ..... we have been de-industrialising and we've been swapping home production for imports, so even though it looks to the contrary [our policies] have been increasing global warming... There are no plans in the net zero carbon target which address that."

We can pretend to polish our green halo and outsource the coal production to other countries, reducing employment here, increasing global emissions and making ourselves more dependent on the rogue state that is Russia. Or we can apply logic and face down the bolshie Extinction Rebellion minority. The newly elected Tory MPs in the impoverished north east apparently describe this battle as "broke versus woke".

If Jenrick were to say "Yes" to the plans there will be a lot of noise because, in the modern world, social media has given the vociferous minority a platform to project their views while the silent majority remains as silent as ever. But carrying coals to Newcastle is an old saying for doing something pointless and it shouldn't be beyond the spin experts to explain just how pointless it is to bring coal in to the country instead of digging it up in Northumberland. Unless, of course, you think we shouldn't make - or buy from other countries - steel, cement and bricks at all and want to go straight back to a pre-industrial revolution way of life with equivalent living standards.

OK, back to the question: has your view changed?

My own answer, before I read the background would have been to disagree with any more coal mines being built here, but now I would strongly support it for our own domestic needs.

Politically this is difficult because of the "optics" from the green perspective, against which there is the red wall and jobs factors. The fact that Jenrick is already tarnished may give Johnson a kind of "free hit" if he leaves his beleaguered colleague to take the flak. However I fear the government will not "follow the science" (or at least the compelling logic) on this one but bottle it somehow.

Some data comes from 'Care about the planet? Rethink coal in the UK' at the Banks Mining website, https://www.banksgroup.co.uk/mining/need-for-coal/care-about-the-planet-rethink-coal-mined-in-the-uk/ which covers how the mining is done responsibly" and what happens to the site afterwards.

Some of this material came from Dominic Lawson's column What has 'builder' Boris got against the miners of Northumberland? in the Daily Mail on 6 July 2020.