NSW approves biggest-ever coal mine expansion, paves the way for 800 million tonnes of pollution

Climate Council Media Release 

The NSW Independent Planning Commission (IPC) has approved the Hunter Valley Operations Continuation Project (HVO), the largest coal mine expansion ever proposed in New South Wales.

The project would unleash more than 800 million tonnes of climate pollution at a time when communities across NSW are already living through worsening floods, bushfires and heatwaves, and paying for them through damaged homes, rising insurance premiums and stretched household budgets.

Climate Council Councillor and former Commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW, Greg Mullins, said: “This is a decision that every community in NSW will end up paying for, including those who are still recovering from worsening fires and floods fuelled by climate pollution.

“What NSW exports as coal, we import back as bushfires, floods, heatwaves and droughts. Climate harm does not stop at the border, and neither does the responsibility for it.”

The HVO Continuation Project will:

• Release more than 800 million tonnes of climate pollution over its life, more than seven times NSW’s annual climate pollution – including 15.1 million tonnes directly at the mine site, and 793.8 million tonnes when the coal is burned
• Add to the climate pollution that is supercharging bushfires, floods, heatwaves and droughts across Australia
• Account for around 0.6 per cent of all the climate pollution the world can still release for even a 50 per cent chance of holding warming to 1.5 degrees
• Extend two open-cut coal mines into the 2040s.

The National Climate Risk Assessment found NSW is among the areas facing the most significant and rapid increases in climate hazards in the country. The NSW Net Zero Commission found that continued extensions and expansions of coal mining in NSW are not consistent with our legislated climate targets, and that the average NSW resident was more than $20,000 worse off in 2024 alone because of climate impacts.

“In the Hunter, more than 12,000 homes are already at high risk of becoming uninsurable. Those families will carry the cost of decisions like this one, and they will carry it for decades,” said Mr Mullins. 

Climate Council CEO, Amanda McKenzie, said: “This decision isn’t the last word. The project still needs federal environmental approval, and the Albanese Government now has to decide whether it signs off on the biggest, polluting coal expansion in NSW history.

“Australian voters were promised a government that takes climate seriously. Approving this project would make that hard to believe. It would become the Albanese government’s 38th coal, oil or gas approval since taking office.

“Australia should be cutting climate pollution further and faster, not adding to it. The Albanese Government must put people before corporate interests and refuse this project.”