Taking your message to Medway: no new coal

Posted by bex — 12 September 2007 at 10:57am - Comments

Delivering the message to Medway
Our energy expert Robin, delivers a giant, coal-filled postcard to Medway Council

A few months ago, I wrote that the UK could be facing a new coal rush; Medway Council was considering an application to build the UK’s first new coal-fired power plant in over 30 years.

The story had a huge response, with over 13,000 of you writing to Medway Council to ask them to turn down the application (thank you!).

This morning, a team from Greenpeace HQ hand delivered a huge batch of your postcards to Medway Council, adding a giant, coal-filled, perspex postcard of our own to the thousands of messages from people in Kent and around the country.

Robin Cooper of Medway Council

We wanted to show Medway Council the huge public call to say no to new coal, a fuel that's just not fit for purpose in the 21st Century. So the team was pleased to be greeted by Robin Cooper (right), the council’s director of regeneration and development, who promised to pass the postcards on to all those responsible for making the decision.

Medway may be a local council, but their decision - due next month - will help to inform our national energy direction. If the council approves E.ON's proposed new plant, they'll be approving a plant that emits more carbon dioxide than 24 of the world’s lowest emitting countries combined. They'll also be approving another 50 years of polluting and inefficient energy generation, using a system which allows two thirds of energy to be wasted. And they'll be setting a precedent for the other new plants to also be approved and built around the country.

E.ON - the company that talks green but walks a decidedly murky black - has just submitted their final documents to the council, so we wanted to make sure we put the other side of the story in return: that E.ON's plant would use the worst possible fuel (coal) in the worst possible way (wasting two thirds of the fuel's energy potential), and that the real energy solution is decentralised energy, based on efficiency, renewables and combined heat and power. We even gave them some DVDs of our new film, The Convenient Solution, so they could find out more...

Thanks to all those who have helped get the message out to Medway Council so far. They really do seem to be taking our points seriously. Between your letters, our meetings with the council and the attention it's been getting in the press (here and here say), we're hopeful, but by no means confident yet. If you haven't written, it's not too late to have your say; you can add your voice to 13,000 others here.

Article tagged as: climate change, coal, energy, kingsnorth
Comments Commenting is now closed

Yes, coal is dirty. We know that and is the worst culprit for climate change as pound for pound it produces more CO2 than any other fuel BUT - and here's the rub - EON have said in a press release (3rd September) that they want to make this power station a CHP station and provide heat for over 50,000 homes currently on the drawing board and commercial and business premises. Just like the power station in your DVD. They reckon that would save 1000,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. You have to address this. Where do you stand on coal fired CHP?

By Burdie - 14 September 2007 at 4:39pm

OK (and sorry for the delay on this):

So far all E.ON have done is to announce that they're launching a feasibility study into CHP - something they should have done long before now as a matter of course. Even now there's no guarantee they'll actually use heat capture. From their press release they reckon they could heat 50-100,000 homes with such a scheme. That may sound a lot but, compared with the scale of Kingsnorth, it falls well short of what's needed to make the plant as efficient as it should be or to reduce the carbon intensity to an acceptable level.

The point is really, the overall efficiency of the plant: just how much energy (heat+electricity) do you get out of it for the CO2 emissions. There's a strong case for setting a bar, a minimum carbon intensity standard, below which any new fossil fuel plant would be ruled out. A sensible place to put this might be at the same level as a good quality gas-fuelled CHP plant; any plant with more CO2 emissions per unit of useful energy produced than this would be ruled out. A CHP plant running purely on coal certainly wouldn't meet this standard. And one the size of Kingsnorth and only supplying 100,000 homes would be way, way off. But a state of the art CHP plant, like those in Denmark, running on a mixture of fuels that included some coal along with a significant amount of sustainable biofuels might well meet the standard.

So, basically: We support super-efficient, multi-fuel CHP as the most efficient, flexible form of generating energy with the most scope for getting even cleaner in the future (by increasing the amount of cleaner fuels it uses as they become available). We certainly wouldn't support a CHP plant run purely on coal as the emissions would still be much too high. But, depending on the overall efficiency, we might accept that coal could be used as a part of the mix going into a multi-fuel CHP plant.

That kind of plant on the Kingsnorth site might have to be smaller than the current E.ON proposal because you need enough customers for the heat in order to make it super efficient. But that’s the point: this location isn’t the only place in the UK that new power plants can be built! The size and location of power plants should be chosen to allow the most efficient, state of the art technology to be used in every case – not just as an add on or an afterthought. In the coming years we have to rebuild our energy system whether we like it or not – the money will get spent one way or the other. So the decision we have to make is what we spend that money on: whether to have the same inefficient, dirty, centralised system all over again – and get locked into it for another 50 years, or whether to start building a more flexible, super-efficient and low carbon decentralised energy system now. E.ON’s proposals, even with their scoping study, push us firmly down the wrong path.

By bex - 26 September 2007 at 1:44pm

Yes, coal is dirty. We know that and is the worst culprit for climate change as pound for pound it produces more CO2 than any other fuel BUT - and here's the rub - EON have said in a press release (3rd September) that they want to make this power station a CHP station and provide heat for over 50,000 homes currently on the drawing board and commercial and business premises. Just like the power station in your DVD. They reckon that would save 1000,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. You have to address this. Where do you stand on coal fired CHP?

By Burdie - 14 September 2007 at 4:39pm

OK (and sorry for the delay on this): So far all E.ON have done is to announce that they're launching a feasibility study into CHP - something they should have done long before now as a matter of course. Even now there's no guarantee they'll actually use heat capture. From their press release they reckon they could heat 50-100,000 homes with such a scheme. That may sound a lot but, compared with the scale of Kingsnorth, it falls well short of what's needed to make the plant as efficient as it should be or to reduce the carbon intensity to an acceptable level. The point is really, the overall efficiency of the plant: just how much energy (heat+electricity) do you get out of it for the CO2 emissions. There's a strong case for setting a bar, a minimum carbon intensity standard, below which any new fossil fuel plant would be ruled out. A sensible place to put this might be at the same level as a good quality gas-fuelled CHP plant; any plant with more CO2 emissions per unit of useful energy produced than this would be ruled out. A CHP plant running purely on coal certainly wouldn't meet this standard. And one the size of Kingsnorth and only supplying 100,000 homes would be way, way off. But a state of the art CHP plant, like those in Denmark, running on a mixture of fuels that included some coal along with a significant amount of sustainable biofuels might well meet the standard. So, basically: We support super-efficient, multi-fuel CHP as the most efficient, flexible form of generating energy with the most scope for getting even cleaner in the future (by increasing the amount of cleaner fuels it uses as they become available). We certainly wouldn't support a CHP plant run purely on coal as the emissions would still be much too high. But, depending on the overall efficiency, we might accept that coal could be used as a part of the mix going into a multi-fuel CHP plant. That kind of plant on the Kingsnorth site might have to be smaller than the current E.ON proposal because you need enough customers for the heat in order to make it super efficient. But that’s the point: this location isn’t the only place in the UK that new power plants can be built! The size and location of power plants should be chosen to allow the most efficient, state of the art technology to be used in every case – not just as an add on or an afterthought. In the coming years we have to rebuild our energy system whether we like it or not – the money will get spent one way or the other. So the decision we have to make is what we spend that money on: whether to have the same inefficient, dirty, centralised system all over again – and get locked into it for another 50 years, or whether to start building a more flexible, super-efficient and low carbon decentralised energy system now. E.ON’s proposals, even with their scoping study, push us firmly down the wrong path.

By bex - 26 September 2007 at 1:44pm

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