The High Court of London has ruled that Britain’s approval of its first new deep coal mine in decades was unlawful. This decision comes after a legal challenge from Friends of the Earth and South Lakeland Action on Climate Change, who contested the 2022 approval by the previous Conservative government for a coking coal mine in northwest England. The ruling follows a Supreme Court decision earlier this year, which clarified that planning authorities must take into account the environmental impact of burning fossil fuels, not just their extraction, when approving projects.
Despite the British government dropping its defense, West Cumbria Mining, the project’s developer, continued to argue that the mine, intended to extract coking coal for steel manufacturing rather than electricity generation, would be a “unique ‘net zero’ mine.” However, Judge David Holgate rejected this claim, stating that the assumption that the mine would not result in a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions was legally flawed.
