By Christine Chen
SYDNEY, Oct 7 (Reuters) – A community group has won the first climate change case to come before Australia’s top court, with judges upholding a decision to block a two-decade extension of a coal mine in the state of New South Wales.
MACH Energy had sought to extend the life of its Mount Pleasant mine, which is due to end operations in December this year, until 2048 and double its coal production. The expansion would have allowed it to extract an additional 406 million tons of coal.
The High Court of Australia, dismissing the company’s appeal with costs, found local authorities failed to properly consider imposing rules to mitigate the project’s climate footprint, a ruling advocates say will impact future fossil fuel approval decisions in the state.
So-called scope 3 emissions made up 98% of the mine’s greenhouse gas emissions. But the New South Wales’ Independent Planning Commission did not consider rules to address them as the vast majority would be generated overseas once the coal was exported, said Justice James Edelman.
“By focusing only upon 2% of the project’s emissions, the 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.”
The commission’s decision in 2022 to approve the Mount Pleasant Coal Mine extension would have made it the largest open-cut coal mine in New South Wales.
The decision sparked a lengthy legal battle by the Denman Aberdeen Muswellbrook Scone Healthy Environment Group, an organisation made up of local residents in the Hunter Valley, northwest of Sydney.
The group challenged the commission’s approval and won in the New South Wales Court of Appeal before MACH Energy took the case to the High Court.
The appeal was the first time Australia’s highest court had ruled on a climate change case.
“Today the High Court has said what we have always known: we cannot dig up coal, ship it overseas, watch it drive climate change, and then pretend the consequences have nothing to do with us and won’t be felt by us,” said Wendy Wales, a retired science teacher and the community group’s president.
Anita O’Hart, the lawyer who represented the group in the case, said the court’s ruling would be binding across the state and was one of the “most significant domestic climate law decisions in the world”.
“This is an historic ruling for Australian environmental law … 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.”
MACH Energy said in a statement it acknowledged the decision.
“While we are disappointed with the outcome, we accept the Court’s decision and will carefully review the judgment to understand its implications for future project assessments and environmental approvals,” it said.
(Reporting by Christine Chen in Sydney; editing by Lincoln Feast.)
