Browsing: <a href="/tag/nsw">NSW</a> <i class="grey">•</i> <a href="/tag/climate-litigation">Climate litigation</a>

An Xstrata coal mine and the NSW Government have successfully relied on the looming carbon price scheme to argue against environment group demands that approval conditions should require the mine to offset greenhouse gas emissions.

Xstrata must offset some of its greenhouse gas emissions as a condition of planning approval to double the capacity of its Ulan coal mine, the NSW Land and Environment Court has found in a groundbreaking ruling.

• Closing arguments begin in Xstrata coal mine case
  
• Victorian Parliament passes landfill levies bill
  
• No prospect for an early carbon scheme link with NZ

A NSW court is set to re-assess the merits of a proposed coal mine expansion in a rare form of legal challenge brought by a group of environmentalists.

A NSW court has allowed CO2 activists to seek an order preventing Macquarie Generation's Bayswater power station from burning more than seven million tonnes of coal a year and to ask for new declarations that the company breached implied limits on the plant's greenhouse gas emissions.

A climate activist's challenge in the NSW environment court to approvals to expand two power stations is likely to focus on CCS conditions set by the NSW Planning Minister and whether he has adequately considered ecologically sustainable development.

• Austpac gains NSW environment approval for steel-waste recycling plant
  
• Macquarie Generation loses court bid to make CO₂ challengers pay costs
  
• Hot Rock Ltd granted Queensland exploration permit

Hunger-strike farmer wins right to High Court hearing; High Court to rule on watchdog NGO's tax status; and World Economic Forum issues energy efficiency report.

The threats posed by climate change warrant an 'interventionist approach' by courts and they can have a 'catalytic effect' on legislators, says the Chief Judge of the NSW Land and Environment Court, Brian Preston.

The NSW Court of Appeal yesterday ruled that the state's planning minister doesn't have to consider principles of ecologically sustainable development in granting approvals, overturning a lower court ruling that quashed approval for a coastal residential development plan due to the minister's failure to consider climate change-related flood risk.