Climate change activists target power station

10-04-2007: Today a group of peo­ple inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action have dis­rupt­ed the oper­a­tion of Rat­cliffe-on-Soar coal-fired pow­er sta­tion by lock­ing them­selves to machin­ery. Direct Action was tak­en to tar­get the 3rd largest source of car­bon diox­ide emis­sions in the UK.

One of the group said “the threat of cli­mate change is so huge and the gov­ern­ment so com­pla­cent that the peo­ple them­selves are now act­ing in pro­por­tion­ate response to this and tar­get­ing the root caus­es of cli­mate change. It’s not enough to reduce emis­sions indi­vid­u­al­ly – we need to act togeth­er to chal­lenge fos­sil fuel con­sump­tion.”

“Putting pres­sure on indi­vid­u­als to reduce emis­sions when com­pa­nies like E.ON are prof­it­ing from this pol­lut­ing indus­try is obscene and irre­spon­si­ble. We should not be burn­ing coal in the 21st cen­tu­ry.”

Down­load­able press release:

http://www.eastsideclimateaction.org.uk/press/pressrelease5.doc

press@eastsideclimateaction.org.uk
http://www.eastsideclimateaction.org.uk/

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Updates on the sit­u­a­tion:

There were five peo­ple locked on inside the pow­er sta­tion, two locked on to the con­vey­or belt tak­ing coal into the fur­nace and three to the machines that rid­dle the coal, just before the con­vey­or belt.

Both of these lock on points meant that no coal was allowed into the main pow­er sta­tion oper­a­tion. The effect that this had accur­d­ing to the work­ers who were with us is that sev­er­al of the units went off line and the pow­er sta­tion was run­ning at a reduced capac­i­ty. If we had stayed there for anoth­er hour we would have shut down the whole plant.

We also stopped two trains from unload­ing coal and cost E‑on a lot of mon­ey in railtrack/ train time as well as not sell­ing as much elec­tric­i­ty as they had declared and so fail­ing to met con­tracts and there­fore been fined

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As one of the peo­ple arrest­ed I cant say too much right now but here is what the work­ers were telling us.

At 9:45 when we locked on to the con­vey­er, they said they had less than 6 hours of coal left inside the plant. After 2 hours, pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty was reduced mas­sive­ly. Gen­er­a­tors came offline one by one, due to lack of coal. They had trou­ble putting the lit­tle they had through the machin­ery and not all of the coal was get­ting through. After 2 and a half hours we were removed by police. By that point they were 1 hour from ini­ti­at­ing the shut down pro­ce­dure which would have closed the plant for 48 hours. EON said that Rat­cliffes pro­duc­tion was unaf­fect­ed The rest of the Grid was not dis­rupt­ed and no hos­pi­tals were shut down.

This action was a com­plete­ly ratio­nal and pro­por­tion­ate response to the threat of cli­mate change.
We dont want to incon­ve­nience the pub­lic but these mas­sive sources of emis­sions must be stopped and we need to find anoth­er way if we are to have a hope of sav­ing this plan­et from catastophe.There are so many bet­ter alter­na­tives.

There is no place for coal in the 21st century.The gov­ern­ment must stop build­ing car­bon inten­sive infra­struc­ture and it must shut down the old, if not the peo­ple will. Per­son­al­ly I am very angered by the fact that those in pow­er are not tak­ing this prob­lem seri­ous­ly and think that peo­ple must start mak­ing the changes them­selves.

Its sim­ple to stop the plan­et from dying, we stop burn­ing all fos­sil fuels NOW.

This action goes out to every­one who loves our earth and dares to dream of a future. Empow­er your­self to make a change in the best way you can.

Togeth­er we can do any­thing…

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There were five peo­ple locked on inside the pow­er sta­tion, two locked on to the con­vey­or belt tak­ing coal into the fur­nace and three to the machines that rid­dle the coal, just before the con­vey­or belt.

Both of these lock on points meant that no coal was allowed into the main pow­er sta­tion oper­a­tion. The effect that this had accur­d­ing to the work­ers who were with us is that sev­er­al of the units went off line and the pow­er sta­tion was run­ning at a reduced capac­i­ty. If we had stayed there for anoth­er hour we would have shut down the whole plant.

We also stopped two trains from unload­ing coal and cost E‑on a lot of mon­ey in railtrack/ train time as well as not sell­ing as much elec­tric­i­ty as they had declared and so fail­ing to met con­tracts and there­fore been fined