Alpha coal mine survives another environmental appeal

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The High Court of Australia has reportedly dismissed an appeal from greens group Coast and Country against the Alpha coal mine, being developed by GVK Hancock, in Queensland.

Coast and Country had applied for special leave to appeal the Appeal’s Court decision regarding the emissions that could result from the coal produced at the mine.

The Queensland Resources Council (QRC) on Friday said Coast and Country’s argument “flies in the face of reality and is the equivalent to activists demanding that Saudi Arabia should take responsibility for emissions coming from exhaust pipes of Australians’ cars using Saudi oil”.

“This is just one in a long line of anticoal activists’ attempts to delay jobs and economic growth to Queensland, while pretending that a refusal to supply our coal will mean that countries like India will not simply source their coal from elsewhere,” the QRC said in a statement.

“It is a deceptive argument that stopping a single coal mine in central Queensland will influence the level of global emissions. We know that according to the International Energy Agency coal use continues to grow over the coming decades.

“Therefore, we have to recognise that renewables alone will not be able to meet the world’s appetite for energy and Queensland’s higher-quality black coal is well placed to meet a large share of that demand.”

The proposed Alpha project, in Queensland, has a Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant resource of 1.8-billion tonnes with some 1.2-billion tonnes of reserves. The opencut operation was expected to produce about 32-million tonnes a year over a 30-year mine life.

The project was granted environmental authority in 2014.

Since then, however, it has faced a number of legal challenges from environmental groups, including attempts to have the project’s environmental approval overturned.