IN EARLY December, Michael Gove approved the foundation of the first new deep coal mine in Britain for more than 30 years. Rishi Sunak’s government is enthusiastic about British coal — but why? 

The Conservatives are historically associated with closing down coal mines, not opening them.

Coal is an extreme pollutant, reducing air quality and releasing greenhouse gases.

But Thatcher’s intentions to close down coal mines had nothing to do with the environment.

The Conservative government wanted to cut costs by importing coal from overseas and was prepared to deliberately destroy communities to do so.

The prospect of defeating one of the most powerful workers’ unions was also a priority.   

Despite the heroic strikes in the face of the government’s brutal tactics, like stockpiling coal and police violence, the overwhelming majority of coal mines were shut by the year 2000. Imported coal was used in place of British coal.

Nearly four decades later, coal no longer plays much of a role in Britain’s energy strategy: Britain celebrated two weeks of coal-free electricity four years ago.

In 2021 there were just 485 people directly employed in coal mining in Britain across the remaining five shallow and two deep mines.

All the power plants that use coal are scheduled for closure within three years. So what possible justification could there be for approving a new mine in 2022? 

The mine will be operated by West Cumbria Mining — a firm owned by capital investment firm EMR which is based in the Cayman Islands.

In almost every announcement, commentators repeat the justification that this coal is destined to supply the requirements of the British steel industry. But does this claim stack up?

Steel is one of the most important commodities in the world, made from iron with added carbon.

It is spuriously described as “green” by the steel industry because wind turbines are made of steel — as are oil rigs.

In pure iron, the metal atoms are arranged in a perfect crystal of identically spaced ions. Iron metal is bent easily, because the atoms can slide past each other to re-form the perfect pattern.

By adding a very tiny amount of carbon into the iron to make steel, a patchwork of different patterns are made: some iron-carbon crystals and some pure iron.

The patchwork of tiny crystals means the atoms can no longer slide past each other easily, and the metal becomes strong enough to build bridges and wind turbines. Too much carbon and the patchwork disappears, making the material brittle and useless.

The process of steel production requires extraction of iron from iron ore, which is a rock containing a mixture of iron and oxygen.

To get rid of the oxygen, a huge furnace is filled with iron ore and coal. As the carbon in the coal burns, it reacts with the oxygen in the rock to produce carbon dioxide and monoxide, which are released to leave behind iron.

Actually, because of all the coal used in the process, a lot of carbon is also left behind. This could be a good thing, because of the carbon that steel requires.

However, far more carbon than is desirable is left behind in the iron, making brittle and unusable pig iron.

An advance in the next stage of the industrial steelmaking process was the crucial breakthrough that fuelled steel production through the industrial revolution of the 19th century.

The Bessemer Process was a patented method of blasting hot oxygen up through the molten carbon-iron mixture, this time using oxygen to react with the carbon, once again to release carbon gases.

Bessemer believed that careful calibration of the amount of oxygen used could result in the perfect carbon content for any steel, eg 1.2 per cent for stainless steel. In fact, despite many attempts, it was found that the method required the total removal of all carbon at this stage.

New carbon was then added back into the pure iron to make steel. The same fundamental stages are used in contemporary steelmaking.

The production of steel is a large part of the British economy: it makes up 1.2 per cent of the manufacturing output of the UK and 0.1 per cent of all economic activity.

Big, but wildly out of proportion to the 14 per cent of industrial greenhouse gas emissions it causes. Globally, steel production accounts for 8 per cent of carbon emissions globally and 22 per cent of Europe’s industrial emissions. 

Steel production is often described as very resistant to decarbonisation. Lorryloads of coal are dumped into the furnace along with iron ore.

But although a small amount of carbon is needed for steel, in current blast furnace process, every bit of the carbon that is dumped in to burn the oxygen out is then also itself burnt away.

An estimated 1.85kg of carbon is used to make 1kg of steel, with a remaining carbon load of just 12g. 

Actually, a decarbonised steel process has been invented, and already demonstrated in scaled-up production in Sweden last summer.

Rather than loading iron with carbon, the new method removes the oxygen from the iron ore by blowing hot hydrogen through it, which combines to produce just water.

The process requires neither adding nor removing carbon at any point.

Then the small amount of carbon required is added directly to the steel afterwards (as in the current process).

Although energy intensive, this energy could be produced by renewables — that is, coal is not required.

Italy, France and Austria are each already planning one of these plants, Sweden is building two of them, Germany five. 

The British steel industry will need to convert to the new process rapidly in order to meet decarbonisation targets.

Currently 95 per cent of UK steel is manufactured at just two sites, one owned by Tata at Port Talbot, the other by British Steel (part of Jingye Group which made £740 million profit last year).

Both of these companies have asked for money from the government (£0.5bn and £1.5bn respectively) in autumn 2022 to continue producing steel, otherwise threatening between them to make 11,500 people unemployed.

A fifth of the money requested by Jingye they apparently pointed out to ministers is needed to cover the rising cost of the carbon credits they need to legally continue to release carbon gases. 

Supporters of the new Cumbrian coal mine claim that the coal will allow the steel plants to stop importing half the coal they use from Russia.

Others point out that the coal may contain too much sulphur to be used in the steel plants. Either way, according to the independent  Climate Change Committee that advises British governments, 85 per cent of it is marked for export as surplus.

Moreover, the coal mine now has permission to dig until 2049, despite the fact that UK steel manufacturers are scheduled to stop using coal by 2035 if the UK is to meet its carbon goals.

The government is choosing to pour money into a polluting industry, rather than attempting to change these processes for the better.

The bald truth is that a new coal mine is being built for the same reason that Thatcher wanted to close the old ones: to maximise short-term profit. A failing industry will not guarantee long-term employment for the local community.

The new coal mine will be run for the benefit of a Cayman Islands firm at the expense of the people of Cumbria, Britain, and the rest of the world.

Rishi Sunak is the richest prime minister the country has had, thanks to investment banking. His statement of interests declares that his money is in a “blind trust,” which is meant to make sure that he can’t make political decisions that directly favour his investments.

If he truly doesn’t know where his money is, any shareholder profit could be his own — even if it leaves steelworkers and coalminers in dead-end skills, Britain lagging behind newer technologies, and our planet more polluted than ever.