Miners have long lamented that it is hard to win government approval for new coal mines. But winning government approval to close them might prove even harder.
while it still contains decades of economically viable fossil fuel is a seminal moment in the carbon challenge and shifts the spotlight back to where it should have been all along; on government.
Thursday’s vow to instead shut Mt Arthur in 2030 and repurpose the site is the result of BHP shareholders’ reluctance to own coal for power generation, and BHP management’s inability to find a suitable buyer. In fairness, the NSW government has done better than most governments at explaining coal’s future; in 2020 it published a “Future of Coal Statement”, which declared there would be a “global phasing out of coal in electricity generation”, but added it would “take some decades to complete”.and has been purely an export mine for the past couple of years.