Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether she has plans in place to offset the carbon emissions resulting from the extraction of coal in the event that Woodhouse colliery in Cumbria reopens.

National Planning Policy is clear that planning permission should not be granted for the extraction of coal unless the proposal is environmentally acceptable or the national, local or community benefits outweigh its likely impacts. The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government leads on planning policy for coal mines in England.

The Government is committed to bringing all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. A key part of this is closing all unabated coal generation domestically by 2025. As a result of existing policies, we have already made great headway in reducing our reliance on coal, which fell from 39% of annual electricity generation in 2012 to less than 3% in 2019. We will shortly consult on bringing the deadline for ending unabated coal forward from 2025 to 2024.