A new £165 million (about $218m) coal mine has been unanimously approved by councillors in the county of Cumbria, in the northwest of England, promises hundreds of jobs, but also protests by environmental campaigners.
West Cumbria Mining plans to open the country’s first new deep coal mine next to the site of the former Hag colliery in Whitehaven, which closed down three decades ago.
The Woodhouse Colliery is set to create 500 jobs, but opponents say it will also contribute to global warming, Gizmodo reports.
Once Woodhouse Colliery begins operations, West Cumbria plans to extract and process around 2.5 million tonnes of metallurgical coal a year, for five decades, to supply into UK and European steel-making coal plants. These currently import around 45 million tonnes from USA, Canada, Russia and Australia annually.
The last deep mine in the UK, Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire, shut in 2015.
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