Xstrata Coal had applied for a mining lease and environmental authority to mine additional surface area at its Newlands opencut mine in the northern Bowen Basin.
The Queensland Conservation Council and Mackay Conservation Group had argued in an objection to the company’s application that it should have to offset the emissions of greenhouse gases that were likely to result from the mining, transport and use of the coal from the mine.
“While the decision relates to one particular project, it provides a powerful precedent which hopefully brings the debate out of the fanciful realm of blocking new coal mines or a ceasing or limiting of coal exports,’ QRC chief Michael Roche said.
“These prescriptions will do nothing to address the key issue of how Australia can contribute to limiting the growth in greenhouse gas emissions.
“Blocking a new coal project in NSW or Queensland or winding back Australia’s coal exports will mean that coal buyers will simply go elsewhere to fuel their power stations and operate their steel mills, with no net benefit to the level of global greenhouse gas emissions.”
The tribunal concluded that “apart from having no demonstrated impact on global warming or climate change” the call to offset emissions would have “the real potential to drive wealth and jobs overseas and to cause serious adverse economic and social impacts upon the state of Queensland”.
“Absent universally applied policies for greenhouse gas reduction, requiring this mine (and no others) to limit or reduce its GHG emissions would be arbitrary and unfair. That cannot be what our law requires.”
Roche urged the conservation movement and everyone in the community with a genuine commitment to addressing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change to get behind the practical solutions championed by the coal industry.
“Everyone from Al Gore and Sir Nicholas Stern to the UN panel of experts agrees that clean coal technologies involving carbon capture and storage are going to be critical to successfully tackling climate change,” he said.
