The Woodhouse coal mine, to be developed by West Cumbria Mining in the North West of England, is designed to extract coking coal, which is used in the steel industry, not to generate electricity. Around 500 jobs are expected to be created.
The project, first unveiled in 2014, has been criticized by the British government's own independent climate advisory panel, as well as climate activists and organizations including Greta Thunberg and Greenpeace .
Earlier this year, the chairman of the British Independent Committee on Climate Change, John Gummer, said the Woodhouse project was "absolutely unjustified."
To build a coal mine the size of about 60 football fields, or 23 hectare will take two years and is valued at £165 million ($201 million) in 2019. The mine is proposed to operate for 50 years.
It is expected that most of the coal produced will be exported to Europe.
The UK has passed laws requiring all greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced to zero by 2050.
Britain, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, once employed 1.2 million people in nearly 3,000 coal mines. The last one closed in 2015.
