The Guardian’s Misleading Environmental Reporting

In a recent article, The Guardian’s Environment editor reports on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ call for “all planned coal projects” to be called off across the world to speed up the transition to a renewable-energy-based economy. In that vein, the article calls out the UK government for its refusal to block the planned construction of a coal mine in northern England. However, in doing this, The Guardian is conflating several topics in an apparent attempt to present all of them as equally condemnable and undesirable from a climate change perspective.

Let’s take it from the beginning. Between 2nd and 4th March, the UK and Canadian governments are co-chairing a Global Summit of the Powering Past Coal Alliance. At a high-level plenary address, Guterres urged member governments to do more and be more diligent in their efforts to combat climate change. This is nothing out of the ordinary - the UN is deeply involved in this field and has been for a long time. Of course, coal power has long been the primary target in such efforts, which was naturally also the focus of Guterres:

“If we take the immediate action to end the dirtiest, most polluting, and yes, more and more costly, fossil fuels from our power sectors, then we have a fighting chance to succeed. Phasing out coal from the electricity sector is the single most important step to get in line with the 1.5-degree goal.”

What was new, however, was his request for a specific action to be taken:

 “Today, I am calling on all governments, private companies and local authorities to ... cancel all global coal projects in the pipeline and end the deadly addiction to coal.”

It is crucial to point out that Guterres’ was making his remarks in the context of the issue of coal energy, not simply everything that coal is used in. It is the electricity produced by burning coal that is the thorn in the side of those campaigning for a more environmentally friendly future.

In line with that aim, the UK government has made commitments years ago to phase out coal power stations. This was to be done by 2025, and the government was managing to keep its promises and stay on this track so well that it moved its pledge by one year and is now on track to close all coal-based power plants by 2024, as readily acknowledged by The Guardian.

However, the newspaper then proceeds to criticize the UK government for allowing the construction of a new coal mine in Cumbria. This, The Guardian implies, goes against what Guterres (and by extension the UN, and by extension the world and the progress of history) is aiming for. But a coal mine does not equal a coal-burning power plant. A mine produces coal. A power plant burns coal. Why are they treated the same?

Opening a coal mine is not incompatible with the emission target goals the UK government had set for its energy sector. A coal mine does not change the ratio of clean to non-clean electricity produced. But The Guardian proceeds to equivocate:

“UK energy minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan told the PPCA summit: ‘Having gone over 5,000 hours without using coal for electricity last year, the UK is powering forward with the transition away from coal for power generation and into the enormous economic potential of clean technologies.’ She did not mention the Cumbria mine.”

Well, why would she mention the Cumbria mine if it has nothing to do with “using coal for electricity” or the “transition away from coal for power generation and into the enormous economic potential of clean technologies”?

In a related article, The Guardian interviews Prof Sir Robert Watson, “one of the UK’s most eminent environmental scientists” about the proposed coal mine. Watson is a strong critic of the government’s moves:

“The British government says, ‘We’re going to lead [the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference] in Glasgow, we really care about climate change. But, by the way, we won’t override the council in Cumbria, and we’ll have a new coalmine.’ Absolutely ridiculous! You get these wonderful statements by governments and then they have an action that goes completely against it.”

Maybe that is true. Maybe anything that touches coal is not in the spirit of caring about climate change. But cancelling anything that touches coal is certainly not what Guterres called for - at least not in his recent statements. Neither is it what the UK has pledged to do by committing to shifting the production of energy towards renewable sources.

The Guardian says that about 85% of the coal produced in the mine is planned for export. Any potentially polluting use of this coal would then not factor into the cleanliness of the UK’s economy. This is only a side point, however. The scope of thinking about the environment and climate change is typically global, where, if pollution is produced at all, it is irrelevant whether it is produced in the UK or elsewhere. 

So what is the purpose of mining coal, if it is not meant for producing electricity? The coal from the Cumbria mine is to be used “exclusively as an essential ingredient for steel production”. This is important from the environmental point of view because the steel industry globally produces large amounts of CO2 - about 8%. Coal is used to extract iron from iron ore, a process for which coal is “the lowest-cost energy carrier, … That combined with its high-temperature properties is what makes [it] so important to iron and steelmaking and [it is] really hard to replace,” explains expert Ryan Smith to the Financial Times. 

Nevertheless, some parts of the world have already started pushing, typically through political venues, to transition from the use of coal in steel production to alternative, greener technologies. However, such a process is very costly. Lakshmi Mittal, the executive chairman of ArcelorMittal, the largest producer of steel in Europe, says that in response to emission mandates from the EU, the greener technologies “will increase the cost of our steel. It is not cheap, and our customers should be ready to pay”. In contrast with the energy sector, where some figures suggest that the business case might be already shifting in favour of renewable energy and away from coal, making the shift much less cumbersome, the same is not the case in steel production.

If less coal is produced, its price will go up. Its price goes up, the price of steel produced using coal goes will go up. If that price goes up sufficiently, it will go above the current premium of alternative, greener steel production technologies. It is therefore in the interests of environmentalists to push for the hike in steel prices, among other ways through the restrictions on coal mining. The problem is: steel is so central to the civilisation of today that the rise in its price will, perhaps indirectly, negatively affect almost everyone.

In its efforts to be environmentally activistic in every possible way, it makes sense for The Guardian to condemn both power generation using coal and the mining of coal itself, which is then used for other purposes. But what the newspaper does not make clear is that these are fundamentally different issues, each of which being tied to very different socio-economic costs and calculations. The process and challenges of phasing out or replacing coal-fueled energy production are far removed from the process and challenges of phasing out or replacing coal-fueled steel production. To present those as equivalent is, considering The Guardian’s reach, deeply irresponsible as well dishonest.