Australia’s High Court, the highest authority in the country, ruled against the planned expansion of a major coal mine because of its expected effect on emissions. Climate change activists expect the ruling to affect future decisions on hydrocarbon projects in the country.
Mach Energy, a local coal miner, planned to expand its Mount Pleasant mine’s output and productive life until 2048, doubling production with an additional 406 million tons of coal. The High Court, however, ruled that regulatory authorities had not taken into account the emissions footprint of the expansion, media reported.
“By focusing only upon 2% of the project’s emissions, the [New South Wales Independent Planning] Commission failed in its reasons to consider whether conditions should be imposed to ensure that greenhouse gas emissions are minimised to the greatest extent practicable,” one of the judges said. The decision appears to have been based on the fact that regulators had not considered so-called Scope 3 emissions, or the emissions from the use of an energy commodity such as coal, oil, and gas.
“The High Court has confirmed that planning authorities cannot ignore the chain of causation from a project’s emissions through to real, local climate harm,” one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, a community group led by two retired science teachers, per Al Jazeera, said. “This ruling will be applied by courts and planning authorities across Australia, and it will be studied internationally as one of the most significant domestic climate law decisions in the world,” the lawyer added.
Australia is the second-largest coal exporter in the world, right after Indonesia and before Russia, in terms of volume. In terms of value, Australia was the world’s biggest exporter of coal last year, with $43.7 billion in export revenues.
However, climate activism in the country has been flourishing, with support from successive governments, targeting a significant reduction in the country’s emissions, which automatically means curbs on its energy resource industry.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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