Head of Planning and Development Torfaen County Borough Council Planning Division Y Ganolfan Ddinesig Pont-y-Pŵl NP4 6YB Response to the Glamorgan Power planning proposal to Torfaen County Borough Council - Varteg land reclamation/coal recovery scheme Application reference: 14/P/00637 4 March 2016 Annwyl Madam/Syr, Friends of the Earth Cymru object to the application to mine, by opencast, 256,000 tonnes of coal from Varteg Hill. We do not consider the application to conform to local and national planning policy and request that Torfaen County Borough Council rejects the application on the following grounds: . The proposed development would be contrary to the goals of the Well Being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and the aims of Planning Policy Wales 2015, the requirement for carbon neutral extraction as set out in Coal MTAN and strategic policy S3 of the Torfaen Local Development Plan (to 2021) – Adopted 2013 in respect of the need to tackle the causes of climate change. Ecological impact from the proposed development would have an adverse impact on the designated SINC and associated species contrary to policy S7 and BW1(B)(iv) and BG1 of the Torfaen Local Development Plan (to 2021) – Adopted 2013 and their adverse impact when weighed with other adverse impacts is not outweighed by the benefits of the scheme. The proposed development would be contrary to BW1(B)(i) of the Torfaen Local Development Plan (to 2021) – Adopted 2013 as it has not been satisfactorily demonstrated that noise impacts would be reduced to acceptable levels and would therefore unnecessarily and unacceptably result in harm to the amenity of neighbouring properties and sensitive locations by way of noise pollution. Friends of the Earth Cymru are concerned that the application is flawed because it: . Fails to accurately reflect government energy policy support for coal, given the requirements of the Climate Change Act, the recent Paris Agreement and coal-phase out announcement; . Fails to recognise the climate change impacts of coal and assessed alternatives without considering the climate change impacts (and therefore the Environmental Statement is flawed); . Provides no consideration of how the extraction of coal will be rendered carbon neutral, which is a condition of Planning Policy under MTAN 2: Coal . Places a wholly unacceptable burden of noise on Ysgol Bryn Onnen at levels likely to create severe learning disruption for a period of up to four years, and has failed to measure baseline noise at that sensitive location . Has not provided a Welsh language impact assessment when there will be a clear impact on one of only three Welsh medium primary schools in the county borough . Fails to even consider the air pollutant PM2.5 even though it is an EU limit value pollutant, and considers air pollution to be harmless when its own HIA proves the contrary . Will have a major detrimental impact on landscape and visual amenity . Is likely to have a devastating, permanent effect on the protected ecological resources of the area, with restoration of habitats and species – if it occurs at all – taking up to 100 years . Is based on an ecological assessment that is more than a decade out of date . Provides no details of compensation or mitigation for loss of access land Yn gywir, Gareth Clubb: Cyfarwyddwr – Cyfeillion y Ddaear Cymru Introduction 1. The applicant presents this application1 as one that should be treated as remedying only the Welsh Minister’s concerns following the refusal by the Minister of the 2014 application. However it does not tackle the serious concerns that Friends of the Earth Cymru and others have raised about the original application and which have never been rebutted by the applicant. 2. The application must properly be considered on its merits, and with regard to all material considerations, including whether the requisite information is in front of the decision-makers. 3. Given the deficiencies evident in the environmental statement, we consider that the statement should be updated with the missing information and should undergo consultation under regulation 22 of the Environmental Impact Assessment Regulations2. Climate change and energy policy 4. In order to justify the extraction of coal, the applicant quotes [5.1.4] government energy policy from Mineral Planning Policy Wales, which itself quotes from UK Government guidance dated 1998 and therefore predates the existence of the National Assembly for Wales and Welsh Government: “While UK coal is available and the generators continue to choose it, UK coal contributes to energy diversity and supply”. 5. The applicant also quotes [5.1.5] from an Energy Review dated 2006 which has been superseded by not just one, but by two Energy White Papers. It has also been superseded by various UK Government energy policy statements, including Annual Energy Statements (the most recent of which dates from 2014)3. 6. The justification for this application – that energy policy supports an expansion of coal use in general and opencast in particular – is wholly without foundation. The policies are out of date and have been supplanted in planning terms by both the Energy Act (2013) and Welsh Government energy and planning policy which clearly state a direction of decarbonisation – an aim in which coal cannot conceivably have the slightest future other than when used in combination with carbon capture and storage. 7. The Committee on Climate Change, responsible for advising the UK Government on the measures required to achieve the carbon budgets for the UK, have set out a target for the power sector in the region of 50-100g CO2 per kWh in 2030. Coal fired power stations range from the newer models at 786g CO2 per kWh, while older models are around 990g CO2 per kWh. It is obvious therefore, in a low carbon economy, that given the carbon demands of other sectors, that the power generation sector has to be virtually carbon neutral to achieve the budget. 1 http://www.planapps.torfaen.gov.uk/Varteg/ 2 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/293/made as amended 3 https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/371387/43586_Cm_8945_accessible.pd f 8. The applicant then uses reference to policies that are clearly out of date and superseded by more recent policy to claim that coal could make a contribution to “reducing carbon emissions as part of the Welsh Government’s approach to tackling climate change” [5.1.6]. It is simply not the case on the basis of science that unabated fossil fuels, in particular coal, contribute to the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore to tackling climate change. Members and planning officials alike at Torfaen County Borough Council will be aware of the latest information from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which notes that: “the coal industry, producing the most carbon-intensive of products, faces almost inevitable decline in the long term”4. 9. This forecast of decline is echoed by the OECD and International Energy Agency (IEA) assessment of the prospects of coal in the medium term. The IEA notes that prices for European coal have collapsed from $120 per tonne in March 2011 to $70-80 per tonne through 2014: “In 2014, coal oversupply persists and very low coal prices continued to dominate”5 “The forecast for coal [in Europe] is steady decline… the series of factors pushing coal prices down has been astonishing… given the dramatic fall in the cost of solar and wind generation and the stronger climate policies that are anticipated, the question is whether coal prices will ever recover… In the current persistent low coking and thermal price environment, most investment decisions on mining and infrastructure capacity will be delayed or postponed and – if prices do not recover – eventually cancelled, meaning that coal will stay underground”6. 10. The demand for coal projected in the application is collapsing as coal plants retire. Even the trade association for the energy industry, Energy UK, concedes: “Phasing out coal-fired generation is part of the transition to a low carbon power sector”7. 11. Indeed, five coal-fired power stations have already announced this year that they will close by 20168. The use of coal in the UK collapsed in 2015, with a 22% reduction on 2014, resulting in a total reduction in use of 41% since 20139. 12. A series of papers entitled “Policy briefs covering the main measures included in the Energy Act”10 is instructive. The policy brief on the Emissions Performance Standard11 apprises: “The EPS will support the planning policy requirement that any new coal-fired power station must have a proportion of its capacity equipped with Carbon Capture and Storage, sending a clear regulatory signal that any new coal-fired power station must be constructed and operated in a way consistent with our decarbonisation objectives”. 4 http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/vol4/index.php?idp=196 5 http://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/MTCMR2014SUM.pdf p11 6 https://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/MTCMR2015SUM.pdf pp15-16 7 http://www.energy-uk.org.uk/press-releases/22-2015/5516-energy-uk-s-comment-on-coal-power-stations-closure.html 8 https://sandbag.org.uk/blog/2016/feb/9/uk-coal-closures-will-make-uk-cleaner-greener-plac/ 9 http://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-emissions-fall-again-after-record-drop-in-coal-use-in-2015 10 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-bill-policy-briefs 11 https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/266882/EPS_Policy_Brief_RA.pdf 13. The policy brief on Decarbonisation12 notes: “The Government announced in November 2012 a landmark agreement on energy policy that will deliver a durable, long-term signal to investors… to set a decarbonisation target range for 2030”.