Britain's Communities Secretary rejected plans for a new Northumberland open-pit coal mine, citing climate change concerns. The rejection was the first of its kind to rest on climate change concerns in the United Kingdom. The country has committed to phasing out coal use at power plants by 2025.

Member of Parliament Sajid Javid overturned the recommendation of the UK planning inspector as well as the Northumberland county council's approval last week, according to the Financial Times. The project would have been completed before 2025 and would have employed about 100 people. Still, the mine would have been situated near Druridge Bay and would have destroyed landscape and heritage assets, in addition to contributing to climate change.

The Guardian posted a detailed memo (PDF) from the Communities Ministry explaining that Javid "concludes that overall the scheme would have an adverse effect on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change of very substantial significance, which he gives very considerable weight in the planning balance."

The UK has been aggressive in its push to phase out coal, the fuel that drove the British Industrial Revolution centuries ago. Last summer, the UK marked its first day in 135 years without its power plants burning any coal. The Financial Times writes that coal "accounted for less than 7 per cent of UK power generation last year, down from 40 per cent in 2012."

The fall of coal mining is also apparent in statistics from the UK government. Only 17 opencast (that is, open pit) mines were operating in the country at the end of 2016, down from 157 in 1944 (although as recently as 2001, 56 opencast mines were still operating). Deep mines producing coal (that is, underground mines) had essentially ceased production in 2016, although five such mines were still in operation.

Gavin Styles, the managing director for Banks Mining, which submitted an application to develop the Northumberland project in 2015, told the Financial Times that the UK government "has now demonstrated that it would prefer to source the coal that is essential for a variety of important industries across the UK from Russia or the US, rather than support substantial investment and job creation plans in our region."

However, it doesn't seem that the UK is importing much coal, either, even as coal mining operations dwindle. From UK statistics, the country only produced 4 million metric tons of coal in 2016 while it imported 8 million metric tons. In 2001, when the country was producing considerably more coal (32 million metric tons), it was also importing a lot more coal (36 million metric tons). Coal imports hit a peak in 2006 and 2013, when 51 million metric tons of coal were imported in both years. (Although the data doesn't distinguish between thermal coal used to produce electricity and coking coal used in industry, another set of UK government data suggests that coking coal produced and imported was only a small fraction of the coal used for electricity generation.)

Reuters notes that Britain "has a legally binding target to cut emissions of harmful greenhouse gases... by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050." Clearly, the country intends to stay on track. The Guardian notes that two coal power plants in the UK are scheduled to close this year, after which only six will remain.