LONDON (AP) — A judge on Friday rejected plans for the United Kingdom’s first new coal mine in three decades, delivering a victory for climate groups who challenged the project's claim it would have zero impact on global emissions.
High Court Justice David Holgate's decision follows a June ruling by the U.K. Supreme Court that said planners reviewing oil well-drilling permits must consider the greenhouse gas emissions from burning the extracted oil.
“The assumption that the proposed mine would not produce a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions, or would be a net zero mine, is legally flawed," Holgate said.
Friends of the Earth and South Lakes Action on Climate Change, a local group, challenged the government’s approval of the plan for the mine’s development in a coastal town in England’s northwest Cumbria area.
The developer, West Cumbria Mining, defended the proposal in court after the Labour government, which was elected to power in July, dropped its support for the project approved by their Conservative predecessors.
“This is fantastic news and a huge victory for our environment and everyone who has fought against this climate-damaging and completely unnecessary coal mine," said attorney Niall Toru of Friends of the Earth. “The case against it is overwhelming: it would have huge climate impacts, its coal isn’t needed and it harms the U.K.’s international reputation on climate."
The ruling sends the decision back to the government for reconsideration.
The mining company, which had promoted the project as a net-zero positive, said it would consider the ruling but declined to comment.
When the Conservatives approved the plan in 2022, environmentalists said it was a backward step and would make it harder to achieve a goal of generating 100% of electricity from clean energy sources by 2035 and reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The left-leaning Labour government has also distanced itself from its predecessor's emphasis on oil and gas exploration. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced plans to increase wind power generation and pledged to not issue new oil drilling licenses in the North Sea.
The mine on the site of a shuttered chemical plant in Whitehaven, a town 340 miles (550 kilometers) northwest of London, would have extracted coking coal used in steelmaking rather than producing electricity.
Opponents said the coal would no longer be needed domestically as Britain's largest steelmaking operation in Port Talbot, Wales, owned by India’s Tata Steel, transitions from coal-fired blast furnaces to electric arc furnaces, which emit less carbon.
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FILE - An aerial view of the the site of a proposed new coal mine near the Cumbrian town of Whitehaven in northwest England, Monday, Oct. 4, 2021. A London judge rejected on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, plans for the United Kingdom’s first new coal mine in three decades, delivering a victory Friday for climate groups who challenged the project's claim it would have zero impact on global emissions. (AP Photo/Jon Super, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes are drifting higher Tuesday following a mostly encouraging batch of profit reports from big companies.
The S&P 500 was 0.6% higher in early trading, as many markets around the world took tentative steps following Donald Trump’sreturn to the White House on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 188 points, or 0.4%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% higher.
Trump has promised sweeping moves to reshape global trade and the economy, often at the expense of other countries, but stock indexes in Asia and Europe were mixed amid mostly modest moves. U.S. Treasury yields eased in the bond market, giving back some of the big gains made in recent months that cranked up the pressure on stock markets worldwide.
In the foreign-currency market, the values of both the Mexican peso and Canadian dollar sank after Trump said he expects to put 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting on Feb. 1. The peso fell 1% against the U.S. dollar, and the Canadian dollar slipped 0.6%.
Trump had threatened to place even stiffer tariffs on Chinese imports during his campaign, but he said Monday he wanted to have more discussions with the leader of the world’s second-largest economy.
On Wall Street, 3M helped lead the market higher and climbed 3.6% after reporting profit and revenue for the end of 2024 that edged past analysts’ expectations The company behind Scotch tape and Command strips also gave forecasts for financial results in 2025 that were roughly in line with analysts’ expectations.
Charles Schwab jumped 6% after likewise delivering a better profit report for the end of 2024 than analysts expected. It credited clients pouring more dollars in, as its total client assets rose 19% from a year earlier to $10.10 trillion.
They helped offset a 7.9% drop for Walgreen Boots Alliance. The U.S. Justice Department accused Walgreens late Friday of filling millions of prescriptions without a legitimate purpose, including for dangerous amounts of opioids. In the lawsuit, the government says the drugstore chain’s pharmacists filled controlled substance prescriptions with clear red flags that indicated they were highly likely to be unlawful.
Walgreens, one of the country’s largest pharmacy chains with over 8,000 locations, said in a statement that it stands behind its pharmacists and “will not stand by and allow the government to put our pharmacists in a no-win situation, trying to comply with “rules” that simply do not exist.”
In the bond market, Treasury yields eased to give back some of the big gains they’d made in recent months amid worries about higher inflation.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.57% from 4.62% late Friday. Like the U.S. stock market, bond trading had been closed on Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were rising slightly across Europe after finishing mixed in Asia.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.9% after embattled Chinese property developer Country Garden got a reprieve on its deadline for working out an agreement with its creditors.
AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
A staff member walks past a monitor showing Donald Trump delivering a speech at the inauguration ceremony as President of the United States, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, at a foreign exchange trading company in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
An electronic stock board shows Japan's Nikkei index as a monitor shows Donald Trump delivering a speech at the inauguration ceremony as President of the United States, at a securities firm Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
A monitor near a Japanese and the U.S. flags shows Donald Trump delivering a speech at the inauguration ceremony as President of the United States, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, at a foreign exchange trading company in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)