Planning authorities in Australia's New South Wales (NSW) state today approved a 19-year extension to the 26mn t/yr Hunter Valley Operations (HVO) thermal coal mining complex, clearing a key regulatory hurdle for the project.
NSW's Independent Planning Commission (IPC) has permitted the HVO North mine to prolong operations from December 2026 to 2045, and HVO South to extend from 2030 to 2042. The HVO complex, jointly owned by Chinese-Australian producer Yancoal and Switzerland-headquartered Glencore, will also need to secure federal environmental approvals by 31 December.
Yancoal welcomed the IPC's decision and said it was optimistic final approvals would be secured. HVO previously had approval to produce up to 42mn t/yr of run-of-mine (ROM) coal, but the companies agreed to reduce this limit to 26mn t/yr as part of their extension application. The complex produced 14.8mn t, 15.3mn t and 11.9mn t of run-of-mine coal in 2024, 2023 and 2022, respectively, on a 100pc basis, according to Yancoal's financial reports.
Planning authorities considered approving the extension for a shorter time than proposed, but ultimately chose to award approval for the entire project lifetime after hearing evidence from HVO that the full 19-year extension would be required to preserve the project's economic viability, the IPC said.
The IPC ruled that the benefits to NSW's Hunter Valley region in terms of employment and economic activity outweighed the project's estimated climate impacts. HVO argued that stopping operations at HVO North at the end of the year would have significant consequences for the complex's 1,500 employees and the broader regional economy.
Regulators were due to make an approval decision on 4 September but were granted a four-week extension due to the complexity and significant public interest surrounding the case, which featured a three-day public hearing and received over 10,000 written submissions.
The IPC acknowledged that greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from the project would contribute to climate change but said 98pc of emissions would occur in overseas jurisdictions where the coal was consumed. Authorities said they would impose conditions to ensure coal would only be sent to jurisdictions that had policies to reduce GHG emissions in line with international climate agreements.
The project's estimated total emissions are 809mn of CO2 equivalent (CO2e), of which most would be scope 3 emissions at 793.7mn t CO2e. Scope 1 emissions would reach 15.1mn t CO2e in a gross basis, which would be reduced to net emissions of around 9.5mn t CO2e after deducting carbon offsetting or abatement under the safeguard mechanism, Australia's compliance carbon market, and to around 7.97mn t CO2e after further reductions committed to under NSW's emissions reduction targets.
The mine reported scope 1 emissions of 670,583t CO2e for the July 2024-June 2025 period under the safeguard mechanism, above its baseline of 630,086t CO2e. It surrendered 40,497 Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) as a result.
Project deliberations came against the backdrop of rising focus on the legal and policy implications of continued fossil fuel production. Current policies place the world on track for warming of 2.6°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100, according to UN report released on 2 September.
The NSW state government said in March it would stop issuing permits for greenfield thermal coal developments under its NSW Coal Industry 2026-50 framework but would continue to assess extensions of existing coal mines.
