UKH

Today is the last day you can send any objections about the planning application for the proposed coal mine off the coal at St. Bees/Whitehaven. https://www.coalaction.org.uk/2020/06/object-coal-mine-cumbria

Just saying. Obviously if you think it's a great idea then no need to send an objection. I'm pretty sure the mine won't affect the climbing (at least in the short term, eventually rising seas will ruin the bouldering).

Is it coke or normal coal?

If the former--I quite like metal things,tthey make my life easier...and it's impossible to make new steel without.

If the new mine means we import less coke from further afield then there are ecological benefits there.

It is metallurgical coal being mined, not fuel coal. 

The pit head will occupy the old marchon chemical works site, it will not be visible from the crag, though you may pass it en route to the crag. 

The mine will provide much needed sustainable employment to an area overly dependent on a single sector which is winding down.

I understand how one could be sucked in to the knee jerk reaction of "it is coal so it must be bad" but little progress will be made towards any renewable targets without raw materials. 

Not taking the rip but coke comes from roasting coal I believe.

It's coking coal.

Yes, and no. There are are ways to produce steel without coking coal but they aren't currently economically viable.

I like steel too, but I'd also like global temperatures to be in a useful functional range for people, animals and plants.

The minutes of a previous council meeting about it make interesting(!) reading, it's certainly not a simple issue - https://councilportal.cumbria.gov.uk/mgAi.aspx?ID=50574

Some points raised in the meeting - 

There's a high methane content in the strata to be mined, you can't just say "It'll save on transport costs so it's better to use local coal", you need to look at overall emissions.

The transport costs (in terms of emissions) are only 1% of the emissions related to the burning of the coal and (I've read) that 80% of the coal will be exported and not for UK use.

There are other methods of producing steel that don't use coking coal but the more coking coal produced globally the less likely these methods are to be economically viable.   It also reduces the economic viability of steel recycling.

Advancing the methods of producing steel in an ecologically sustainable way is really important because we can't continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere and also have a functioning ecosystem. Approving a coal mine that is likely to have a lifetime of 50 years when we know we have to reduce our use of fossil fuels seems incredibly short sighted.

Nope, it doesn't.

I'm not sure that the current cost of steel is what's holding us back from hitting renewable energy targets, doesn't renewable energy already compete favourably with fossil fuels? I get the impression the challenges are more political in nature rather than due to a lack of raw materials?

I think you're right that it's easy to think in simplistic terms and that "it's is coal so it must be bad", I didn't really have any objection to the mine to start until I'd taken a long time to consider it and look at the long term implications.

The more coal we dig out of the ground the cheaper it'll be and the less likely we'll have alternatives any time soon.

But if all things are equal between a coke mine in Canada and one over here, you will save the emissions- presumably coke is found in similar geological contexts around the globe?

The green method of making steel appears to be using Hydrogen, which isn't exactly eco-friendly to produce on industrial scales either.

Pick your battles, and in the grand scheme of emissions, this seems like small potatoes.  Did you see the article today stating that 15 dairy farms emit the same as the whole UK? Most people could function without dairy... I don't think society would continue to function without steel.

If. I'm not sure either of us can calculate that either way, things are connected in complex ways. For instance, what if the coal that the Canadian mine was producing for us is now shipped to Korea? I just think because the transport emissions are such a marginal amount of the total emissions relating to the coal it doesn't make a strong argument. 

It's likely that this industry is going to have to step up. The government is putting £250 million into a clean steel duns and £100 million into a low carbon hydrogen production fund. Opening a new coal mine now undermines (ahem) those efforts and likely locks in use of coal for 50 years into the future.

I don't disagree. Low hanging fruit and all that.

The original mines at Whitehaven used to extend up to 8 miles from the pithead.

Sellafield is about 8 miles from the proposed site in Whitehaven.

Call me an old cynic, but I reckon this whole project will falter right about the time one of the mine tunnels arrives directly under Sellafield. Then they'll open a shaft down from there and after all the workings have been 'abandoned' and sealed at the Whitehaven pit head, these unused shafts will be declared to be 'perfect' for nuclear waste disposal and really secure because all the acess will be from within the Sellafield grounds.

They'd never get away with digging an underground disposal system starting at Sellafield, but starting at the other end and disguising it as 'a coal mine', gets the job done. They might even find some coal.

Sadly aluminium is too reactive to extract using coke. You will have to burn the fuel to generate electricity to manufacture your foil hat.