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Ministers to rule on coal-fired power station

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Published Date: 04 January 2008
By ALAN JONES AND TOM PUGH
MINISTERS will decide whether to give the go-ahead for Britain's first coal-fired power station in more than 20 years after local councillors backed the plan despite protests from environmental campaigners.
Energy giant E.On UK wants to replace existing coal-fired units at Kingsnorth power station in Medway, Kent, with two new cleaner coal units under a £1 billion scheme.

The firm said the move would produce power from coal more efficiently and more
cleanly than ever before in the UK. Backers claim it would produce enough energy to supply about 1.5 million homes from 2012 as well as cutting carbon emissions by almost two million tons a year.

Medway councillors supported the plan, which attracted thousands of objections, but the final decision will be made by the government.

Greenpeace last night said the proposal gave Gordon Brown his biggest test since pledging to put Britain at the forefront of efforts to combat climate change.

The group warned that if the Prime Minister gives the green light to the new coal-fired station, it would signal Mr Brown's "surrender" on the UK's long-term climate change targets.

Conservation charity WWF also expressed "grave concern" at the council's approval of the application, adding that if it was built, the plant would "badly undermine" the UK's ability to reduce its carbon emissions.

But Jonathan Smith, an E.On spokesman said: "We're delighted the council has found in favour of the scheme. The final decision rests with the government, but we're confident the plans will go ahead."



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  • Last Updated: 04 January 2008 12:48 AM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
 
1

,

04/01/2008 02:43:50
Comment Removed By Administrator
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2

Nell,

Far from the Struan 04/01/2008 08:36:01
No. 1:- Tell that to the Chinese.
3

Unimpressed one,

04/01/2008 09:27:49
#1 presumably your're one of the merry band of nutters who think that wind will solve the energy requirements of a modern industrial nation. Notice that Greenpees, WWF and even Christian Aid have all put their tuppence worth in on this one. All unqualified, eco bams with left wing credentials. Our power requirements should be left in the hands of expert engineers, not half-witted greens and dim MPs none of whom are remotely techically qualified to advise on anything important.
4

Mike S,

04/01/2008 09:55:36
#1 Now that you predict the demise of the coral reefs thousands of selfish, thoughtless people will rush off by the planeloads to see them before they disappear. The selfish attitude of people will need to be reversed before anything meaningful can be achieved but with our marketing based consumer society it ain't gonna happen pal.
5

Saoghal Beag,

04/01/2008 10:09:30
MacAlba, it's a question of taking the least impact but practical solution . You could switch off your pc, your tele, etc, turn the heating down and walk everywhere, but that is not something that we can force folk to do and there is the right wing extremist consumers like the unimpressed one who think that the bigger their tele, car, etc is the more impressed we will all be.

therefore it comes down to short and long term solutions. there is emergent renewable technology but it is not market ready so primarily we are using hydro and wind just now. we do need a wider variety of generation, preferably with a significant amount of that generation raised in the built environment.

however we do require baseload. clean burn coal with carbon capture could well be the best option, the alternatives of gas fired which may be held to ransom by the sources of gas or nuclear, with no disposal option of the waste and hidden carbon from build along with uranium mining, processing and transoprt and liekwsie the processing and storage of the waste.

As for the coral reefs, i think that that statement is a bit bold. at best it may hold that the known species on shallow reefs will die out but there are other spp that may take their place, there are also deep water reefs to think about.
6

Nell,

Far from the Struan 04/01/2008 11:09:52
As intimated previously, until the Chinese, Americans etc. buy into any of this we are just p1ssing into the wind.
7

Neil,

Glasgow 04/01/2008 11:13:22
The "environmentalist" movement & in practice most politicians is opposed to any method of producing electricity that actually works.

Coincidentally EON are about to put up electricity prices 10%. This will be denounced by "environmentalists" & most politicians.
8

truthsleuth,

04/01/2008 11:47:21
#5 Saoghal Beag,
Well put, but CO2 IS a very serious problem
9

Neil,

Glasgow 04/01/2008 12:25:10
"Outside of that economoic logic, i just can't see why this plant should be built"

Perhaps to supply electricity. If we are going to lose 50% of our supply over the next few years how should Scotland surv ive. Or is survival not a legitimately "green" objective?
10

Yok Finney,

Ross-shire 04/01/2008 12:58:17
-- When will people understand that there is no such thing as "clean" coal?

You get different types, but it's nearly all carbon in a useful solid form that we can burn more cleanly by various engineering - ie use less of it for the same output - and take alot of the CO2 off the flume.

A little global warming delays the (more likely) next ice age which we're certainly not prepared for.

Clean hydrogen is it really? It produces vapour and steam! which must affect the climate. H2 is an very small molecule that needs energy and ingenuity to contain it at all in any useful amounts. Galactic engineering does this by large entities called stars via ultra high frequency quark events we measure as gravity.
11

Saoghal Beag,

04/01/2008 13:25:54
Nell, since when did two wrongs make a right. China is doing wrong so we should too? That's a miserable defeatist and lazy argument.

truthsleuth, i think that the human impact on the planet is a serious problem and that goes way beyond carbon counting. I think anthropegenic climate change is a reality but we can not hang our hats on one single hook. We must come up with solutions which are economically vaible (rules out nuclear and photovoltaics, environmentally responsible and socially acceptable. I am very sceptical about carbon counting since much of it is pie in the sky, for example nuclear is carbon neutral? or gordon browns zero carbon homes.

#10 Neil, didn't noticethe lights going out when both torness and hunterston were down, that's more than 50% of our demand.
12

Nell,

Far from the Struan 04/01/2008 13:33:14
No. 12:- Miserable and defeatist maybe, but I'm not wrong.
Unless China and America and others who are producing much more CO2 than we are, and are currently planning to produce even more, do something then we are snookered.
13

Saoghal Beag,

04/01/2008 13:46:53
Nell, I don't disagree about the impact of america and china, but that is no excuse for us to put our head in the sand and do nothing.
14

morris,

edinburgh 04/01/2008 17:10:15
6
I understand where you are coming from: however,
whilst there is no doubt that any savings made here are probably more than cancelled out by emmissions elsewhere,it never the less makes sense to emit less, because the total is less.THAT WILL ALWAYS BE TRUE!
Just because China is industrialising at a rate which is frightening,and US of A is just plain being an arrogant bully boy, and showing the face of capitalism gone mad ,it does NOT mean that we should follow their example.

We have to start,its as simple as that.

We have two choices
1)Renewable energy
2) Look for somewhere else to live (planet ie)

The sooner we understand this the better.
The longer we delay, just forget it!

Burying nuclear waste is guaranteed to screw up this planet .Its a question of when not if!
Seismic activity means there are NO safe sites anywhere, ever.

Renewable energy or perish.Quite simple to understand !
15

Neil,

Glasgow 04/01/2008 17:21:12
Daniel agree with you that coal is not the optimum technology. It is dirty, dangerous & the idea of "clean coal" (ie that we can punmp 100 million tons of CO2 at high pressure under the North Sea forever without effect) is merely the latest moonshine. My strong preference is for nuclear power.

However the politicians & other Luddites (& presumably all those whio voted for them) say we cannot have nuclear. Now they say we cannot have coal. Their decision to stick their heads in the sand while girning loudly is killing pensioners now & will kill many more in future. If we cannot have nuclear we must have more coal or accept scasrcity, monopoly prices & blackouts.

Despite Saoghal's delusions we cannot lose 50% of our power & not have a shortage. In fact Hunterston was kept running last winter & only closed for a month in April for repairs when demand was reduced.
16

Saoghal Beag,

04/01/2008 18:42:24
Neil, Nothing delusional, both hunterston and torness were off line at the same time in 2006, (something about cracks, but hey it's safe technology). since Torness is reported to supply 50% of our total generation capacity, it seems that we can actually loose more than 50% in reality and still not suffer since we do have so much over genreation in Scotland.

It isn't an easy choice and i do agree that we need base generation from some source along with existing and developing renewable technology.

Nuclear has no waste solution, is desperately expensive (subject to greater subsidies, both direct and indirect that any renewable technology), dependent on a finite fuel source and hence monopoly market prices and relies on the UK throwing a huge wad of cash over to the US for our next station. I doubt very much that nuclear is carbon nuclear once the build, the mining and transport of fuel and storage of waste is taken into account, but as i sadi above i think that carbon counting can be mileading and at some point in the addition is dependent on best guess. For these reason hin e benefitsd far outwiegh the advantages, though "clean" coal has its problems i believe that it's disadvantages are less than nuclear.

But the focus here is on technology as the answer, it isn't. Technology is what we use to fill the gaps after we have done everything we can to reduce demand.
17

Unimpressed one,

04/01/2008 19:48:55
#16 morris,"Renewable energy or perish.Quite simple to understand." I suppose you support the lib-dem position that we can get all our power requirements from renewables. We need our energy needs discussed and proposed by engineers. These are the people who envisage, design, build and run our power infrastructure. Politicians should only have a say when all the technical decisions are finalised, since they will need to sign the cheques on our behalf. The greens, media and unqualified/ misguided members of the public should have absolutely no say on the matter whatsoever. And Scotsman/EEN please adopt a UK spell-check on your site!
18

davy mac,

canada 05/01/2008 02:27:10
Only one long term answer I'm afraid...
reduce the demand for electricty
Only one truly effective solution...
Double the price of electricty
Seriously.
19

davy mac,

canada 05/01/2008 02:42:46
I guess 'unimpressed' will be unimpressed with my previous spelling of electricity. I guess I lost my 'i's whilst rolling them....
20

tomi,

05/01/2008 08:04:45
These people who are opposed to the futute use of coal are desecrating the memory of the thousands of working men who laboured and often died extracting this precious commodity from the earth.

These miners are my heroes, not these petty-minded "greens". They say that they are so concerned about the environment, but do they restrict to any significent extent their own consumption?
21

Neil,

Glasgow 05/01/2008 12:03:15
Soghal even among the eco-crowd who will lie shamelessly on anything I have rarely seen so many untruthful statements in so few paragraphs:

Torness does not supply 50% of our power - it is about 1/6th.

Therefore that does not prove "that we can lose more than 50%" safely (even in April when usage is low as I explained).

Windmills provide about 3% of our power so we do not "need" this - the £1 billion a year subidy it sucks up is more needed. What we need is an inexpensive reliable source of power & windmills certainly aren't it.

Nuclear has a "waste solution" - you bury it. In fact it has several.

It is not "despertely expensive" - at 1.3p a unit it costs half what coal costs & 1/4 what windmills cost (1/6th if offshore).

It is therefore non-truthful to say it needs subsidies - unlike virtually everything the eco-parasites support.

The fuel source - uranium, thorium etc - is easily sufficient to keep the entire world on nuclear power for more than 5 billion years - since the sun is expected to explode in 4 1/2 this means solar (& indeed everything else) is more "finite" or less "sustainable" than nuclear.

The front runners for building our next station are not from the US but French. It is unfortunate that NuLabour, under pressure from the lying eco-fascist lobby destroyed the British nuclear building industry.

Nothing involving living humans is 100% carbon neutral because they have a tendancy to breath. However nuclear is closer to cabon neutral than windmills (windmills have up to 1,000 tons of CO2 releasing concrete to hold them in place each).

Power policy should not be decided by the "best guess" of ignorant Luddites. It should be decided by engineers who know the subject. For the same reason I would not cross a Forth bridge built by "environmentalists" relying on "best guess" but would use one built by engineers.

"But the focus here is on technology as the answer, it isn't" - when discussing electricity production & indeed mos
22

BK,

Cyberspace 05/01/2008 12:21:11
#1 MacAlba
If you are trying to use a pseudo Gaelic name, I suggest you get it right and not make a fool of yourself. MacAlba is not Gaelic - the correct form would be MacAlbainn, as in Coinneach MacAlbainn, the first King of All Scotland.
23

Euan,

Edinburgh 05/01/2008 13:07:47
I think the go-ahead of this new coal-fired power station would be excellent news for the UK.

We need to be producing as much of our own energy as possible, and with world-wide energy prices at an all-time high, 'home-grown' power is all the more welcome.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the engineers who would be building this new station will have developed new, cleaner, more efficient practices to ensure that maximum amounts of energy can be extracted from the coal.

Gordon Brown should recognise these facts, stop getting railroaded into silly decisions by the bleeding 'CO2' brigade and ensure future energy supplies in the UK can be met by proper investment in our own power stations.

24

Euan,

Edinburgh 05/01/2008 13:11:21
Oh, and I include nuclear power stations in my last post also.
25

Sanny,

Portugal 07/01/2008 01:36:53
With all these Greenies of various brands spouting about CO2 production, can they tell us how much CO2 is produced naturally and how much is due solely to man? As Lord Kelvin once said; when you can measure it then you may claim to know something about the subject. I believe the independent Climatologists (i.e. those not dependent on the IPCC for funds) put the ratio at 186::6. The lower figure being man's contribution. So man's total contribution is little over 3% of the total.

As we breath in O2 and convert it to CO2 which we breath out. I propose that all the Greenies who are so concerned about CO2 emmissions should breath in but not out. That would at least protect our ears and sanity if not the planet.

We need to realise that we are coming to the end of the current interglacial period and will enter into a new ice age anytime in the next thousand years. If pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere can prevent this then let’s do it.

Whilst the greenies are working the above fact on CO2 emmissions, perhaps they can spare a little time to explain – with proof – what the effect of GW will be. An Ice Age is Cold and Dry and is inhospitable to life. Whereas GW results in the Warm and Wet conditions essential to life.

The green brigade also need to recall where all the coal and oil originated from. A hint: - they were all once life forms that depended on atmospheric CO2 to grow.

Can we please replace the sound-bites and slogans with solid information based on verifiable sources.
26

Sanny,

Portugal 07/01/2008 01:47:23
With all these Greenies of various brands spouting about CO2 production, can they tell us how much CO2 is produced naturally and how much is due solely to man? As Lord Kelvin once said; when you can measure it then you may claim to know something about the subject. I believe the independent Climatologists (i.e. those not dependent on the IPCC for funds) put the ratio at 186::6. The lower figure being man's contribution. So man's total contribution is little over 3% of the total.

As we breath in O2 and convert it to CO2 which we breath out. I propose that all the Greenies who are so concerned about CO2 emmissions should breath in but not out. That would at least protect our ears and sanity if not the planet.

We need to realise that we are coming to the end of the current interglacial period and will enter into a new ice age anytime in the next thousand years. If pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere can prevent this then let’s do it.

Whilst the greenies are working the above fact on CO2 emmissions, perhaps they can spare a little time to explain – with proof – what the effect of GW will be. An Ice Age is Cold and Dry and is inhospitable to life. Whereas GW results in the Warm and Wet conditions essential to life.

The green brigade also need to recall where all the coal and oil originated from. A hint: - they were all once life forms that depended on atmospheric CO2 to grow.

Can we please replace the sound-bites and slogans with solid information based on verifiable sources.
27

,

07/01/2008 05:16:10
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