Cumbrian coal mine scandal does not expose conservative environmental hypocrisy | Charlie Goulbourne

In recent years, our news cycle has been full to brimming with government promises to lead the way in the fight against climate change. In 2019, we proudly announced that we were the first major economy to commit to net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Boris Johnson has hailed our economic recovery from the pandemic as a “green industrial revolution” that will catalyse this decarbonisation. Our new budget also includes a sustainable National Infrastructure Bank with an initial 22 Billion pounds capital investment to go along with 15 Billion pounds worth of new government green bonds.

By all accounts, our Conservative government seem intent to lead the world, all guns blazing, into the green era.

Considering this, when plans for the UK’s first new deep coal mine in three decades were announced in late 2019, they were met with complete confusion. With the IPPC stressing that the world must collectively halve our carbon emissions by 2030 to avoid climate catastrophe, it seems baffling that at this critical time we are willingly plunging ourselves back into the dark age of coal.

This was precisely the attitude adopted in the media response anyway. The policy director of Greenpeace lamented the approval of the mine, claiming that we must “look forward to the jobs of the 21st century, not back to those declining industries”. This pressure from Greenpeace and other environmental campaigning groups eventually led to the calling in of the plans and the launch of a public enquiry into the future of the coal mine.

The proposals for the Cumbrian mine, which I suspect most of the project’s critics have declined to read, make it clear that its purpose “is not concerned with the extraction or burning of fossil fuels” and that “only coal that may be extracted from the site is that which is suitable to be used in the industrial process for steel manufacture.”

Nevertheless, the steel industry is hardly green itself. In fact, it is responsible for up to nine percent of global emissions from fossil fuel use. The decarbonisation of the steel industry must play an integral role in emissions reduction, hence the cries of hypocrisy that we seem willing to persist in our polluting ways.

Critics point to alternative technology, which may be powered by renewable energy sources, as implying the obsolescence of new coal mining. Vince Cable even claimed in the Independent that the mine is rendered unnecessary as we can “make steel, without coal, using electric arc technology”. This is at best at best naïve misinformation. Anyone with but a cursory knowledge of the steel industry could tell you that this is merely a method of recycling steel that has already been produced. However, we still need new steel, consumption across the EU is expected to rise an immodest 13% in 2021. And I am afraid to produce new steel, we still need coal.

Others argued we should instead be focussing on directly producing steel using hydrogen. However, this technology simply does not yet exist. Currently, hydrogen can only be used as an auxiliary reduction agent in the blast furnace process of steel production, which at best reduces emissions by only 21%. The prospect of utilising hydrogen to directly reduce iron ore, eliminating the need for fossil fuels in steel production, is many decades away, even according to the predictions of the most optimistic industry-leaders.

Secondly, the hydrogen necessary to make this speculative “green steel” itself is produced using fossil fuels. Hydrogen today is extracted using natural gas in the process of steam methane reforming – which releases large quantities of carbon dioxide. The only prospect of green hydrogen production comes in the form of electrolysis – a process so electrically demanding that in order to produce sufficient amounts of hydrogen to power the world’s steel production, global electricity demand would need to increase by 20%.

Even if all this technology were available tomorrow, it would require an entirely renewable electrical grid to make a dent in global carbon emissions. That is, an electrical grid consisting of steel solar panels and steel wind turbines – the largest of which are now topping 3000 tons.

There is a certain snobbery reserved for the offices of Greenpeace that simultaneously celebrates the erection of every new wind turbine while sneering at the industries and working men that build them.

When activists speak of leaving behind “dirty jobs” of coal mining, they have never really proposed to eliminate these industries, but rather export them to poorer countries with weaker environmental regulations. Despite the cries of “environmental injustice” that are now compelled to accompany any discussion regarding climate change, many seem happy to continue to shift the burden of industrial emissions to developing nations, import their goods (releasing yet more emissions) and then proudly declare themselves carbon neutral.

It is true that 80% of the coal mined in Cumbria would be exported to steelmakers in the EU. Yet, the EU is currently the largest importer of steel in the world, with over four million metric tons coming from Turkey, China, South Korea and India collectively each year. If we are to take the global perspective so beloved by environmentalists, there would be nothing better than supporting European steelmaking with coal produced on the shores of Europe so that these wasteful global steel imports may not be necessary.

I am afraid that there is a conflict between utopia and reality happening here. Whatever becomes of the Cumbria coal mine, it does not represent the choice between an enlightened green future and a regressive industrialism. If it does go ahead, it is due to a pragmatism that understands that mining coal in order to produce steel closer to the point of use, instead of shipping it halfway across the globe, is environmentally sensible, never mind that it will finally re-shore some industry to our ailing economy.

It understands that for at-least a generation, we will have no alternative to current commercial steel production methods and so nothing is achieved by refusing to use our own coal to produce our own steel, besides an illusion of environmental progress. If it does not go ahead, we will be no less dependant on coal to build the cities of the future and the renewable energy sources that power them – our dependence on coal will simply be out of sight and out of mind.

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