WE ALL know that climate change has and will continue to affect us all, and that politicians say that to avoid a climate disaster we must reduce CO2 emissions to net zero.

We all know that closing the British coalmining industry and coal-fired power stations was not a magnanimous act to combat climate change. 

It was a politically motivated vendetta against the miners, their communities and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the consequences of which we are now paying for through our ever-increasing energy bills.

When Ed Miliband MP was appointed secretary of state for the newly formed Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) he set out a two-pronged approach to reduce CO2 emissions and ensure that Britain had a clean, secure and affordable supply of energy that would offer some protection from external events such as Covid and the invasion of the Ukraine.

British-mined coal was to play a part in this approach with funding set aside for investment in the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) which would reduce the release of CO2 emissions produced by burning coal in coal-fired power stations.

Further funding was set aside to invest in renewable sources of generating electricity through wind and solar. 

The investment in CCS was never made and following the election of the Con-Dem government in 2010 the £1 billion that was set aside was taken back by the Treasury.

This signalled that the policy was once again anti-coal and the electricity generators made a dash for gas as an alternative, justifying it by the fact that gas was cheaper and produced less CO2 than coal.

The NUM warned at the time that over-reliance on imported gas would put at risk the energy security of our nation and that eventually market forces and the desire to produce bigger profits would increase prices.

As well as being exposed to price increases, we would have no protection against international events that reduce gas supply or increase the demand in a global market.

The government’s solution to the current energy crisis is to build a new fleet of nuclear power stations to replace the security that had in the past been provided by coal.

I remain to be convinced that this is a solution to combat climate change and reduce CO2 emissions or if we are just changing one problem for another.

Nuclear power has its drawbacks and there is still no solution to the problem of nuclear waste that it produces.

If the British government believes that renewables (solar, wind and tidal) and new nuclear are the way to combat climate change then they are inviting other countries to also invest in their own nuclear power.

There is no doubt that the British nuclear industry is well-regulated and has a good safety record, although that cannot be guaranteed to be the case in every country and as we know the consequences of a nuclear incident can extend beyond international borders.

Following the commitments made at Cop26 in 2021 the fact is that when energy security and affordability are threatened by world events some countries that have retained coal generation have put their Cop26 commitments on hold and increased coal production.

It’s a fact that when the going gets tough, the tough can turn back to coal. Combating climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution.

We are still burning imported coal for the generation of electricity and production of steel.

This is counterproductive. You increase the CO2 footprint by shipping coal from halfway round the world. Would it not be better for the environment to produce our own indigenous coal and reduce the emissions of transportation?

Outsourcing coal production does not reduce CO2 emissions. Only this week Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng asked Drax power station in Yorkshire to delay by six months its plan to close its remaining coal-burning facility to help get the country through the winter and help survive the current energy crisis. It will now remain in operation until at least March next year.

West Burton power station in Nottinghamshire has also agreed to extend the life of its coal-burning operations by six months, and talks are taking place with owners of a third coal-fired power station. They all use imported coal.

We still have the coal beneath our feet to power our nation and provide a secure, reliable and affordable source of energy that can be burnt cleanly with the introduction of CCS and complement our unreliable renewable energy production.

Would it not have been better for combatting climate change if the example we had set was to clean up the use of coal with the introduction of CCS? 

Surely it would have been better received by other countries that rely on coal to have shown them that they could protect the jobs in their mining industries, be protected from world events that put up energy costs and combat climate change.

The destruction of our coal industry was a politically motivated act by politicians but it has done little to combat climate change or reduce global CO2 emissions.

Being anti-coal to improve your green credentials is nothing more than a political stunt.

Getting them to admit that there was another option to reducing our CO2 emissions — ie continuing to have the ability to mine and burn coal cleanly for the benefit of the nation — will be an impossible ask. They will never admit they got it wrong.

And where is the accountability? We pay for their mistakes and political choices through higher energy bills, by failing to give other countries a viable alternative to decimating their mining industries and economies and becoming over-reliant on imported energy to underpin what renewable energy production they have.

If we are to successfully combat climate change, we need to have a global plan of action that recognises the difficulties that everyone has and how important a secure and affordable supply of energy is.

We need the politicians to make reducing CO2 emission their priority — not their political ambitions or how they can benefit their supporters financially out of the climate emergency.

We need politicians who are big enough to stand up and admit that there was another way and they got it wrong, to stop swapping one problem for another, but instead solve the problem.

I believe that coal, which caused some of the problems of increased greenhouse gases, can be part of the solution if we invest in CCS.