Norway To Close Last Coal Mine In Arctic By September 2023 - Store Norske

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 30th September, 2021) The authorities of the Norwegian settlement of Longyearbyen in Svalbard have canceled the contract with the state-owned mining company Store Norske for the purchase of local coal starting September 2023, leading to the closing of Norway's last coal mine on the Arctic archipelago, the company announced on Thursday.

"The Gruve-7 mine supplies coal to the power plant in Longyearbyen. Now the agreement to supply coal to the power plant has been terminated, so there is no more reason to operate the mine. We have mined coal in Svalbard for over 100 years and now the date for the end of the coal era has been set," Jan Morten Ertsaas, the company's CEO, said in a statement.

Longyearbyen authorities decided that the use of coal should be fully phased out by fall 2023. After that, the city's power system will temporarily switch to diesel until renewable energy solutions are developed.

The closure of the mine by 2023 will reportedly result in the loss of about 80 jobs. The company said it intends to launch a retraining program for employees so that they can continue working in the Arctic power system.

Coal from Gruve-7 is also supplied to Europe, and, given current high prices, the company added that it will increase the production and export of the resource from 90,000 tonnes to 125,000 tonnes until the mine closes.

In 2017, Norway closed down two of the three mines operating at that time on the archipelago due to low oil prices. For a century, coal mining in Svalbard has provided employment for a significant part of the local population and was the basis of Norway's economic activity in the archipelago.