The proposed Cumbria coal mine was back in the news yesterday as 40+ Tory MPs demanded it be approved immediately. Some detailed thoughts on why the mine would damage UK climate credibility and why pitting climate action against jobs is a false choice https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56109690

Let’s be clear about what is being proposed: the Woodhouse Colliery deep coal mine would operate until 2049 and would export 85% of its coal to the EU. The annual emissions of the coal extracted would be equivalent to putting an extra 2 million cars on the road.

Coal is by far the largest contributor to global heating. If the world is to get to #NetZero in time we must shift decisively away from it now. Opening new mines increases global coal supply, reduces price, increases demand, and stunts the development of low-carbon alternatives.

The international ramifications of the UK, a founding member of the Powering Past Coal Alliance, planning to open a new coal mine are dire. The NRG letter doesn't mention COP26 and for good reason because this scheme is already damaging our credibility as hosts and No 10 know it.

Then there is the impact on the progress we’ve made as a country in reducing our territorial emissions. As @theCCCuk has warned, this new coal mine would not only “increase global emissions” but will have “an appreciable impact on the UK’s legally binding carbon budgets”.

The argument that opening this mine would cut emissions as a result of reduced demand for imported coking coal ignores the fact that the cumulative emissions generated by the coal extracted would dwarf any transportation savings on the small proportion to be used in the UK.

In arguing for approval, the NRG letter erects a straw man. No one is arguing that there currently exists a viable alternative to coking coal in the steel-making process or disputing that UK steel will require such coal for some time to come.

The issue is whether the short-term need for coking coal domestically, in the context of a rapidly changing global steel industry and our country’s efforts to set the pace on emissions reduction, justifies the opening of a new UK deep coal mine until 2049. It clearly does not.

In order to achieve #NetZero, @theCCCuk recommends that UK steelmaking be “near-zero emissions by 2035”. That is likely to require a rapid shift toward a combination of electric steel recycling and hydrogen-based reduction for primary steel. This will require less coking coal.

Nor is the future of coking coal as an exportable commodity looking particularly healthy. A third of global steel today is made without it, the market is shrinking rapidly and the ongoing acceleration of the energy transition is likely to exacerbate the trend.

Yet West Cumbria Mining’s business case for the Woodhouse Colliery is premised on production up to 2049. The inevitable result will be to force a choice down the line between achieving the UK’s climate targets and ending the 500+ jobs the mine promises early.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Areas like West Cumbria need good jobs, but we should be working flat out to ensure Cumbrians get #netzero aligned jobs that are secure for the long-term, whether that’s in hydrogen fuel cell manufacturing, SMRs or floating offshore wind.

Likewise the future of UK steel can be secured by doing what it takes to aid the development of the breakthrough technologies the industry needs to go green. That's why the Government needs to establish the £250m Clean Steel Fund scheme announced in 2019 as a matter of urgency.

Investments in renewable technologies can create three times as many jobs as fossil fuel industries; combining those that can begin immediately (e.g. in insulation and nature restoration), with long-term, high-skilled, high-wage jobs in the low-carbon industries of the future.

. @IPPRNorth estimates that 46,000 such jobs could be created in the north of England alone. But it requires government leadership, an effective industrial strategy and a Green Economic Recovery. In their absence we will see more instances of jobs set against climate action.

There is one aspect of the NRG letter that cannot be argued with: it is not for Cumbria County Council to determine national policy. That is why @RobertJenrick must take this new opportunity to intervene and call in this deeply flawed application.