Eon

Leave it in the ground!

Posted by jossc — 13 June 2008 at 4:21pm - Comments

Coal protesters stop a train of the black stuff on its way to Drax, the UK's largest coal plant

Thirty climate campaigners today stopped a coal train on its way to Drax power station in Yorkshire, Britain's single largest source of CO2 emissions. Dressed in white overalls and canary outfits, they used safety signals to stop the train at a bridge on a branch line used exclusively by the power station, before jumping aboard and shovelling coal off onto the tracks. Some used climbing ropes to suspend themselves under the bridge from the train, making it impossible to move the train while the protest continues.

When is a coal plant not a coal plant?

Posted by jossc — 21 May 2008 at 4:23pm - Comments

Drax from a distance: the UK's biggest source of CO2 pollution

Drax from a distance: the UK's biggest source of CO2 pollution

Silly question I know. A coal plant is a coal plant is a coal plant - still the dirtiest form of power generation known to us, no matter which way you look at it. But now that more and more people are uneasily waking up to the fact that the government are about to sanction a new generation of the things, suddenly we're knee-deep in spin about how environmentally friendly they could become. How surprising.

First there's been a great slew of CCS 'clean coal' stories. Carbon capture and storage may be theoretically feasible but it's expensive (up to twice the cost of unabated coal), technically complicated (involving deep cooling the CO2 into liquid form and creating a network to pump it out back under the North Sea where our oil and gas reserves originally resided) and commercially untried (so far no one is keen to pay for it themselves).

Prince Charles joins clamour against coal as industry greenwash steps up

Posted by bex — 14 February 2008 at 6:09pm - Comments

Blimey. First Al Gore, then Nasa's top scientist and now Prince Charles. Yep, Charlie has joined the clamour against new coal and, while he didn't go as far as Gore and call for "rings of young people blocking bulldozers," he did stand up in front of the European parliament and ask:

"Can we really understand the dynamics of a world in which energy and food security will become real issues for everyone? ... Can we possibly allow twenty years of business as usual before coal powered generation becomes clean? Are we truly investing enough in renewable energy?"

Coal giant dictates government climate policy

Posted by bex — 31 January 2008 at 8:50pm - Comments

One email, four words and six minutes: that’s how long it took for the government to reverse its energy policy and trash our chances of meeting our climate change targets.

We’ve got our mitts on some government documents which show how a single angry email from E.on destroyed a central pillar of the government’s energy policy in just a few minutes.

Drowning in greenwash

Posted by jamie — 9 January 2008 at 4:03pm - Comments

Watching TV used to be a relaxing pleasure but now it makes my blood boil. It's not the programmes so much (although a lot of it is rubbish) but the advert breaks overflowing with greenwash, filled with images of doe-eyed creatures and tranquil woodlands by companies trying to convince me that they're really very green and, actually, always have been.

Injunction and arrests: over to you, Gordon

Posted by bex — 9 October 2007 at 10:57am - Comments

At the top of the chimney

See all Kingsnorth updates.


After spending a full day locked onto conveyor belts inside Kingsnorth coal fired power station - potentially the site of the first new coal plant in the UK for over 30 years - most of our volunteers in the conveyor belt team were arrested last night, after E.ON served an injunction.

The small team at the top of the chimney (above) spent the night 200-odd metres above safe ground. They’re still up there but, having placed the ball firmly in Gordon Brown’s court on whether the UK faces a new coal rush, they’ll be starting the long climb down soon. It sounds as though spirits are high, if a little exhausted.

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