The Climate Council welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to the NSW Independent Planning Commission’s (IPC) assessment of the Hunter Valley Operations North and South Open Cut Coal Continuation Projects (the HVO Continuation Project).
The HVO Continuation Project, a joint venture between Glencore and Yancoal near Singleton in the Hunter Valley, is the largest coal mining proposal in NSW’s history. It seeks to extend the life of the mine until up to 2045 and open up extraction of an additional 429 million tonnes of coal. The project would primarily provide export coal to international markets.
Meanwhile, NSW communities are already living with the impacts of climate change, driven primarily by the extraction and burning of coal, oil and gas. The Hunter region itself has one of the highest proportions of climate-exposed properties in the country. Approving the state’s largest ever coal mining proposal would contradict the IPC’s obligations to consider climate pollution and impacts, putting more Australians in harm’s way to benefit large fossil fuel corporations. Coal regions like the Hunter need certainty and genuine investment in their future, not another extension that ties them to a global market already in structural decline.
