While these approvals had been flagged in early December, there were still a lot of surprises on the day.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s claim that the government had approved no new coal mines in 2024…on the day that she approved three coal mines.

It’s an odd claim, perhaps relying on “new” coal mine to mean an entirely new hole in the ground, as opposed to a newly approved part of an existing hole. The most recent entirely new hole in the ground was tacitly approved in June 2023, perhaps helping the minister claim some kind of accuracy while completely misleading the public.

These misleading posts can’t be explained by the Minister’s communications staff being on holidays – they’d worked hard earlier in the day to put out a happy press release about renewable energy, accompanied by a nicely produced video.

Given the timing, and all this comms effort, it all looks like an effort to ‘take out the trash’ before Christmas. And remember, this is a Minister with a lot of trash to take out – in addition to plenty of remaining coal mines, there are high profile decisions due on North West Shelf gas exports, Australia’s largest fossil fuel project, and on whether to let salmon farms drive species to extinction in Tasmania.

Also surprising was the Minister’s insistence in media reports that these coal mines are for steel-making, and are therefore somehow good environmentally. The key point is that the climate doesn’t care if coal is burned in a power station or a steel mill. All emissions are problematic and as much coal as possible needs to stay in the ground. (see here for more discussion on coking coal and climate)

In the case of the Boggabri mine, the minister’s claim isn’t even true. According to that project’s documents, it will produce 32 million tonnes of power station coal and 25 million tonnes of steel-making coal. But even this is misleading as the grade of steel-making coal is very low and could easily end up on thermal coal markets.

Queensland Government figures show that the other two mines produce considerable volumes of thermal coal, Lake Vermont produced over 1 million tonnes last year.

The minister goes on to claim that “there are currently no feasible renewable alternatives for making steel”. The word “feasible” is doing a lot of work here. Swedish companies sold the world’s first green steel over three years ago and electric arc furnaces have been around for years – these don’t need coal but do need recycled steel that has been made with coal.

Sure, green steel isn’t available in major volumes, lots of coking coal is still required and Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coking coal. But hang on, I thought Australia was forging a future made from green steel. Aren’t we becoming a world leader in green metals? Other ministers tell us that a Future Made in Australia is made with Australian green steel and a sustainable long-term future.

How the hell is Australia going to lead the world towards coal-free steel while also approving metallurgical coal mines out to 2088.

Yes, you read that right. The Lake Vermont approval from the Federal Government is to 2088, even though the state approval is for production to ONLY 2050. The Caval Ridge approval is to 2062 and Boggabri to 2053.

The government can’t have it both ways. Either it wants to lead the world on green steel or it wants to prolong coal-based steel production. Yesterday’s approvals of decades-long coal mines make it pretty clear that it is the latter.