Thursday, 31 July 2008

Sleepwalking into a coal fired nightmare

The chief executive of the energy generator e.on, Paul Golby has written a letter defending a new generation of coal-fired power stations in today's Guardian and claiming that renewables cannot power the UK. He says the protesters heading for this year's Climate Camp at his Kingsnorth power station are being unrealistic. I think he's wrong. And dangerous.

Renewables can power Britain given the necessary political will. An estimated 40% of Europe’s wind blows through the British Isles yet we obtain a miserly 1.5% of our electricity from wind. The equivalent figure for Germany is 6%, for Spain and Portugal 9% and Denmark a whopping 19% (2007 figures). All those countries give residents fiscal incentives to supply electricity to the grid. And they prioritise renewables when they are online. By contrast the British government appears to be dead against both policies, which is strange since they have been such a success in Europe.

Coal has the capacity to utterly overwhelm us in terms of carbon emissions. If we start building a new generation of coal-fired power stations (and if we don’t give China assistance to move to cleaner technology), then we will guarantee catastrophic runaway climate change. Carbon capture technology is simply not ready and will not be ready for decades if indeed it can ever be made to work. Just as we cannot guarantee there will be no leaks from nuclear waste facilities we cannot guarantee that CO2 will stay in the ground.

As the saying goes: E.On - F.Off!

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