Regional focus
environmental fantasies to bed, a far less jovial debate was under way back home. Amid the uplands and rocky coasts of west Cumbria, experts debated a proposed mine near the town of Whitehaven. Most new schemes raise hackles, of course, but the controversy around the so-called Woodhouse Colliery felt different. In part, that’s down to history. The September 2021 public inquiry into the mine only happened after the local council approved it three times, the secretary of state intervened, and journalists splattered gallons of ink covering the story. In truth, however, these quarrels can be understood in a single word: coal. Hoping to revive the region’s tradition of heavy industry, supporters of the project claim the new deep coal mine would offer jobs and support steel manufacturing. For obvious reasons, climate change activists heard ‘coal’ and saw red. Given the nature of political disputes these days, these questions are unlikely to be resolved soon. What the new mine can perhaps tell us, however, is the way the winds are blowing and how mining operators may eventually be forced to change their operations whether they want to or not.
Coal reception
People have mined in west Cumbria for centuries. The monks at St Bees, just down the coast from Whitehaven, started in the early 14th century, when Edward I was on the throne and the Scots won at Bannockburn. They’ve continued ever since. Even in the 1970s, Whitehaven’s Haig Colliery was extracting around 700,000t of metallurgical coal every year. Yet since the coming of Thatcher and the closure of the mines, replacement industries have struggled to keep up. The local chemical plant has disappeared, and the nuclear plant at Sellafield is being decommissioned too. As Mike Starkie explains, that leaves west Cumbria dangerously exposed to the perils of deindustralisation. “There’s been quite a lot of decline in the area,” says Starkie, the Conservative mayor of Copeland, the borough around Whitehaven.
This is certainly supported by the numbers. Though west Cumbria arguably hasn’t suffered quite as much as other parts of England, 14% of households get by on less than £10,000 a year. In Barrow-in-Furness, an ex-industrial town 40 miles from Whitehaven, around one-third of children live in poverty. These numbers explain the fundamental draw of the Woodhouse Colliery, an underwater facility that could open as early as 2023. “This new coal mine gives the opportunity for the economy to really diversify,” says Starkie, adding that the new mine could also stimulate local business more broadly. According to West Cumbria Mining (WCM), the organisation behind the project, the Woodhouse Colliery would create 500 direct jobs and 1,618
World Mining Frontiers /
www.nsenergybusiness.com
more indirectly, something even the mine’s enemies accept. “There would obviously be local benefits – from some jobs,” says Maggie Mason, a member of South Lakes Action on Climate Change, a local charity opposed to the project. Even so, gauging the mine’s economic impact
isn’t easy. For one thing, there’s the question of longevity. Initially, WCM had claimed the facility would operate for 50 years. That figure was subsequently cut. The mine would now close in 2049, something John Ashton, an independent speaker and writer, speculates may have been a concession to try and get the mine past “the obstacle course” of England’s planning system. Mason, for her part, makes a similar point. Given it’s been decades since miners operated in the area, she worries that any new colliery would need to rely on imported foreign experts. Mason is hardly reassured by the fact that WCM is owned by EMR Capital, an Australian-based company. And though that quarter-century lifespan isn’t nothing – Starkie notes it represents most of a working life – west Cumbria is arguably better off investing in more enduring industries. One area of interest is wind energy. “If you look at what’s happened in the North Sea, as offshore wind has taken off in the UK, that should also be happening in the Irish Sea,” says Ashton, who after a career as a diplomat served as the UK foreign secretary’s special representative for climate change for six years until 2012. “That would create far more jobs than a single coal mine ever could.” Tourism is another alternative. With ruined monasteries tumbling down to pristine pebble coastlines, and literary links with poets like Wordsworth, this remote corner of England could yet become a visitors’ paradise – to 2049 and beyond.
Steel yourself
As the public inquiry into the Whitehaven mine buzzed into life, WCM made a striking assertion. The new facility, the organisation claimed, would emit net-zero carbon. Beyond technological improvements – methane gas capture, microgrid
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The Woodhouse Colliery in west Cumbria is set to create 500 direct and 1,618 indirect jobs.
West Cumbria Mining
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