Gordon Brown tomorrow faces his first test since pledging to put Britain at the forefront of efforts to combat climate change. A proposal to build the UK's first coal fired power station in over thirty years (1) will land on his desk on the same day his government launches a consultation on expansion at Heathrow airport.
The outcome of Brown's decisions on new coal and new runways will determine whether Britain can meet its long-term global warming targets, which the Prime Minister on Monday suggested would be revised upwards to an 80 per cent cut in emissions by 2050.
Greenpeace is warning that giving the green light to a new coal-fired station at Kingsnorth in Kent and a new runway at Heathrow would lock Britain into huge carbon emissions for decades and signal Brown's surrender on the new 80 per cent target before he's even formally adopted it.
E.on's application to build a new coal station at Kingsnorth is expected to be given the go-ahead by Medway council tonight (Wednesday). The Tory controlled authority has raised no objection to a plant that will emit over eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year (2).
Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said: "On Monday Gordon Brown promised this country would lead the fight against climate change. Well very soon we'll know if he meant it. A proposal for a new coal-fired power station is landing on his desk on the same day as his government launches its push to get a new runway built at Heathrow. We won't even come close to meeting our new climate targets if we build new coal plants and new runways, it's really that simple."
He added: "The government hopes new coal-fired stations might at some point in the future be fitted with equipment to capture and bury the carbon they produce, but this is pie in the sky. Even Brown's own chancellor says this untested technology may never work and certainly won't be ready in the crucial decade we have left to prevent dangerous global warming. We can't take that kind of gamble with the climate."
Waiting behind Kingsnorth are proposals for at least seven other new coal stations. New coal would fly in the face of advice from the UN's top climate scientists, who warn that global emissions must peak and then fall dramatically within the next 100 months to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change. Nobel Peace prize winner Al Gore said in August this year: "I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power stations." (3)
Greenpeace has calculated that a new generation of coal-fired power stations will account for half of Britain's permissible carbon emissions in 2050 if Brown goes for a new 80 per cent target, as expected (4). Claims that the Kingsnorth plant will be "ready" to adopt Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology in the future are undermined by the evidence. A UN report into its viability predicted that CCS won't be able to play any significant role for decades and earlier this year the UK Chancellor Alistair Darling admitted that the system was "in the foothills" and "may never work". (5)
The respected Tyndall Centre has found that aviation would account for Britain's entire carbon budget in 2050 if the industry continues to expand at expected levels. Greenpeace has today published documents secured under the Freedom of Information Act revealing an extraordinary level of collusion between the government and Heathrow operator BAA, with BAA even writing parts of the aviation consultation. The documents can be viewed at www.greenpeace.org.uk/baa.
ENDS
For more contact Greenpeace on 0207 865 8255
(1) The last coal fired power station to be built in the UK was Drax in Yorkshire, 33 years ago. A public enquiry was held.
(2) Greenpeace estimates that that the new plant at Kingsnorth will emit 8.4 million tonnes of CO2 per year. Eon is already Britain's single biggest greenhouse gas emitter.
(3) http://select.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/opinion...
(4) If we have an 80 per cent CO2 reduction target that will mean a 2050 emissions quota of 117.8mt/CO2 per yr. The new generation of coal-fired stations would emit 56.2 million tonnes of CO2 per year, representing 48 per cent of the new 2050 target.
(5) Alistair Darling speaking at the launch of the Energy White Paper, 23rd May 2007
