The Guardian is reporting that E.ON has decided to back out of building its new facility at Kingsnorth. They're citing the recession and saying it's being postponed until 2016 - but I suspect it is also in part because of the high profile campaign against it. Surely it can now never be built. Let's hope that Ed Miliband now chooses to rule out all emissions from new coal as a sign of Britain's leadership before the key Copenhagen climate meeting.Photo: Coal at Bekonscot Model Village
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08 October 2009
KENT’S GREEN EURO-MP HAILS KINGSNORTH DECISION ‘A TRIUMPH’
The Green Party Leader and MEP for Kent and the South East today welcomed the decision by energy giant E.On to suspend its plans to build a new coal fired power station at Kingsnorth.
Caroline Lucas MEP, who joined protesters at Climate Camp 2008 at Kingsnorth in her Kent constituency to rally against the Government’s continued commitment to unsustainable fossil fuels, said:
“The decision to suspend plans to build the first coal fired power station in Britain for 30 years at Kingsnorth represents a real triumph for everyone who has fought so hard to oppose this dangerous facility. This is a victory for those who have taken to the streets in the fight against climate change.
“Kingsnorth has been nothing short of a PR disaster for the UK Government – and for E.ON, which has tried in vain, via an expensive marketing campaign, to convince the world that it is genuinely committed to a cleaner, more sustainable future.
"A new coal facility at Kingsnorth would emit millions tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year – and potentially keep doing so for 50 years. So-called ‘clean coal’, or carbon capture and storage (CCS) does not even exist yet – and it may well not be possible to fully capture and store emissions for decades to come.”
She concluded: “In the meantime, the Government should be providing long term investment guarantees and incentives in order to initiate a renewable energy and energy efficiency revolution, complete with a new green-collar workforce.”
It makes you wonder about the energy crisis that many think we face.
Is it that E-ON don’t think that Britain will have a shortage very soon?
Or is it that the private sector don’t see themselves making enough money from avoiding the crisis …. ?
Energy crisis yes but that film link in the above post has lots of nonsense - clearly they don't accept climate change is a reality the way hey criticise targets re emissions.
As you say shortages just mean that E.ON can charge more for their energy they produce.
"lots of nonsense"
Indeed there is, but then it is from the libertarian/UKIP brigade, who should get prizes for being the most anti-environmental party in the UK.
They also seem to think that uranium is renewable.
Christopher Booker, one of the interviewees, is kind of typical. It says on Wikipedia that:
"Via his long-running column in the UK's Sunday Telegraph, Booker has claimed that man-made global warming was "disproved" in 2008, that white asbestos is "chemically identical to talcum powder" and poses a "non-existent risk" to human health, that "scientific evidence to support belief that inhaling other people's smoke causes cancer simply does not exist" and that there is "no proof that BSE causes CJD in humans". He has also defended the theory of Intelligent Design, maintaining that Darwinians "rest their case on nothing more than blind faith and unexamined a priori assumptions"
This is the kind of mentality that seems to dominate the internet and blogosphere.
On biofuels though, they have got it right:
“The land needed to produce enough grain to fill the tank of a 4X4 with biofuel just once would feed one person for a whole year.”
“The [EU] targets are unachievable.”
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