Tag: Coal mine

Counting on … day 1.144

9th August 2023

Earlier I reported on the  Ffos-y-Fran open coal mine – https://greentau.org/2023/05/02/counting-on-day-1-108-2/. The mining of the coal – according to the terms of the licence should have stopped last September. Despite their best efforts, the company has not been given any permission to continue beyond that date and yet coal is still be taken out of the ground and away from the site every day. Llyr Gruffydd MS, who is chair of the Senedd’s Climate Change Committee has demanded answers from the Welsh Government over concerns about the extraction of coal at one of Europe’s biggest opencast mines.

Looking on line, this is his email address if you wish to ask what progress is being made to end this continuing extraction of coal:  llyr.Gruffydd@senedd.wales

Counting on … day 1.108

2nd May  2023

The UK’s largest opencast coal mine is to close after an extension to keep it running was rejected.

The Ffos-y-Fran mine, near Merthyr Tydfil, must now stop after 16 years of excavation. The original planning consent had allowed mining to take place up until September 2022 and the campaign  group Coal Action Network had already raised concerns that mining had continued. The mine owners had applied for an extension  until 2024, arguing coal from the mine was needed by the steel industry. But planning officials advised that the proposed extension did not fit with Welsh government policies on tackling climate change, and the application was rejected.

 For more info see the BBC website.

If local campaigners had not pursued this issue, would change have happened?