Ed Milliband has already made a few positive steps in the right direction when he said "the era of new unabated coal is over." However the government still needs to go much further, the current proposals include no new coal power stations being built unless they use Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology to capture at least 25% of their carbon emissions right from day one. With any new coal power stations required to use the new technology to their full capacity within five years of CCS being proven. It's thought that this point will be reached by 2020. That means any new coal plants will still be pumping out 75% emissions until 2020, making them far more polluting than an equivalent size gas fired power station, and what happens if it doesn’t work or if its thought to be unfeasible? Power companies are already lobbying strongly to weaken contingency plans.
Afterwards we all headed back to the assembly field not far off where there was live music from Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly and Ugandan musician Geoffrey Oryema. There were also speeches from various speakers. This was also a nice way to start our groups 'The Big If Campagin' which we will hopefully getting more involved with in the coming weeks.
Milli-Band speakers
If you would like to take action against new coal then follow this link http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/bigif
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