Thats cheerfull news at last someone in authority's made a sensible decision

Steel! Why on earth do we need it? We can use wood instead. 

West Cumbria Mining from TOM DENT on Vimeo.

Well as we need coking coal to make steel here, it is better than bringing the same volume halfway round the planet.

I must say I am surprised at the small no of jobs involved according to the blurb- talk of 500 jobs, that is only a wages bill of order 1-2 hundred million per year only it is not really that big an economic stimulus, and yet the way it is talked up anyone would think that gold was falling from the skies.

Mike

 mapj1 

some years ago I went on an IET Local Group visit to the mining machinery manufacturer here in Worcester Joy Mining, which was previously Dowty Mining and is now part of Komatsu.

We were told that once the mine is set up for full production using their equipment with a conveyor system one person can run it using a laptop, the video I linked to shows the use of underground trucks rather than conveyors so if they have drivers it will require more people than other mines do.

I presume this mine will have supporting pillars left in place rather than letting the ceiling drop behind the mining equipment as it moves forward, I also presume consideration has been given to putting some of the waste from just down the road into those tunnels which will stretch out deep under the sea.

However, at least two UK steel-makers have ruled out using coal from the Cumbrian mine, and steel-makers across Europe are increasingly turning to low-carbon steel-making techniques, such as electric arc furnaces with energy from windfarms and other renewable sources.

That means the market for such coal is likely to be limited. The coal is also expected to be high in sulphur and therefore liable to be rejected even by steel-makers still using coal.

About 83% of the coal produced from the mine would be for export, according to estimates, which would add to global greenhouse gas emissions.

So a pointless mine - just to hasten climate collapse

But, we are also being told the mine is also required as a source of carbon for building EV and storage batteries.

we are still importing about 2 million tonnes of coking coal into the UK a year at the moment.  Longer tern reducing the need for it and not just offshoring our emissions by importing steel from less fussy places would be good.

Right now what the Friends of the Earth fail to mention is that "only" about 70% of steel production worldwide uses the coke process and 30% is electric arc - which is of most use with reprocessing scrap steel which conducts electricity well, rather than original mined ore which is more or less insulating in comparison. It rather depends how long the mine will be used for. Early estimates suggested that the mine is forecast to produce a total of 65 million tonnes of coal over its lifetime - about 35 -40 years of UK use if we used it slowly and kept it all for ourselves.

Inside a blast furnace, carbon chemically removes oxygen from the iron oxide in the ore to create crude iron and CO2. Burning coke also raises the temperature to 2000°C or more, allowing molten iron to be tapped from the bottom of the furnace. Finally, a low percentage of carbon in the iron strengthens the metal, helping it to become steel. It is possible to use methane (natural gas or LNG) instead but the CO2 created per tonne of steel is reduced but  not as vastly different as you may hope as you need more of it...

if yo uuse the carbon as carbon for something else without burning it then of course no CO2 is released.
It is not clear cut.

Mike

The green fanatics will need all the coking coal they can get to build their wind turbines. According to the Siemens Energy CEO wind needs around 10 times the material used for conventional generation.

“Never forget, renewables like wind roughly, roughly, need 10 times the material [compared to] what conventional technologies need,” Siemens Energy CEO tells CNBC.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/17/energy-transition-will-fail-unless-wind-power-fixes-problems-ceo.html

The low energy density of renewables is a significant problem affecting both the energy and financial payback periods. As I said in the True Cost of Wind Power thread the £40 per MWh figure quoted appears to be merely a political ploy.

Just Stop Oil has a similar problem. Around 12% of oil is used as petrochemical feedstock which supplies lubrication oils, paints, plastic insulation, rubber seals, carbon fibre etc.

“Petrochemical feedstock accounts for 12% of global oil demand, a share that is expected to increase driven by increasing demand for plastics, fertilisers and other products.”

https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-petrochemicals

How do they intend to replace these products? My limited understanding of oil reefing suggests that you can’t just reduce the amount of oil produced to 12% as not all parts of crude oil are usable in the same way. Petrol was originally considered a waste product.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/gasoline/history-of-gasoline.php

At least Insulate Britain had the right basic idea but absolutely no clue about how to implement it for the UKs housing stock without creating much bigger problems due to lack of ventilation.

When do we get some joined up thinking from the Green Movement?

Roger B said:

How do they intend to replace these products?

Surely the just stop oil folks will want to go fully renewable in a more realistic timeframe rather than wait for trees to rot down into more oil. How about we harvest seals and whales again? Can get a lot of things from them.....

(That I would protest against)