EON, Kingsnorth 'cleaner coal' power station, and climate change
Energy giant E.ON UK describe the new Kingsnorth power station as a 'cleaner coal' plant. Yet despite these claims a new coal power plant will be twice as polluting as a comparable power station burning gas.
- Burning coal is even more damaging than burning oil or gas.
- Kingsnorth in Kent is the first of seven new coal-fired power stations planned by energy companies for the UK. It will be the first new UK coal-fired plant in over 20 years.
- Kingsnorth will release more CO2 each year than the whole of Ghana. It will not use carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.
- CCS will not be ready until 2020 at the earliest, and according to the chancellor, Alistair Darling, may never be.
- The 50 million tonnes of CO2 that seven new coal plants would emit will wipe out any chance the UK has of cutting emissions by more than 80 per cent by 2050 - our share of what is needed to avoid disastrous climate change.
- If the world doesn’t achieve these emission cuts, then by 2050 one billion people in Asia will have lost their water supply from glaciers, malaria will have spread, and hunger increased.
- Stopping catastrophic climate change will require a huge investment in renewable energy. Building new coal plants will make such investment much less likely.
- Giving approval for Kingsnorth will send a clear international signal that the UK is not serious about tackling climate change and will encourage the growth of the coal industry globally.
Find out more
The World Development Movement have produced a number of briefings about Kingsnorth and it's impacts on climate change:
|
Stop Kingsnorth briefing (World Development Movement) |
|
|
Kingsnorth: tricky questions (World Development Movement) |
|
|
Carbon evictions (World Development Movement) |
Kingsnorth power station is currently owned and operated by E.ON see their page about the power station and their proposal for a new coal power station (pdf).
For more in depth information about climate change, and how it affects the world's poor, visit the World Development Movement climate pages.
Find out more about Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) at EV-EON.
For ideas about alternatives to Kingsnorth, visit the EfficienCity from Greenpeace.