7th October 2009
E.ON, were holding a talk at the student recruitment fair yesterday. The company is responsible for the planned new coal power stations at Kingsnorth, which combined would produce the same carbon emissions as Ghana. With the report by the Global and Humanitarian forum stating that three hundred thousand people are already dying already each year due to climate change, it isn’t a viable option.
The group of activists stormed the talks yesterday by E.ON, getting past the security guards who were holding a pretty tight presence outside the doors, quite possibly due to the continued protests against E.ON at student fairs last year http://leaveitintheground.org.uk/?p=185 .
While three burly guys jumped on one activist, the others handed out flyers to the bemused students woken up from the corporate PowerPoint slumber. An activist took to the podium to tell the audience what E.ON are really about. Claiming themselves as a Green Energy Company while 95% of their investment is into non renewable energies is a clear sign of greenwashing and the corporate bullshit that students have to listen to.
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Kingsnorth power station plans axed — Local Campaigners Respond
8.10.2009
The timing couldn’t be better, Kingsnorth Climate Action Medway (KCAM) and WDM hosted a debate tonight to discuss the future of coal in Medway. The meeting culminated in the announcement that E.on have essentially pulled out of building a new coal fired power station at Kingsnorth.
Local campaigner Trish Marchant said “Its fantastic news for us, but it’s a small victory. We in Medway will be sending our support to the next local group who take on the fight” In a heavy blow to the government’s plans to promote energy from coal, the German company have said they will not pursue the new plant in the UK until at least 2012.
Jane Harris, a local KCAM campaigner said “This is a step in the right direction, it shows that people really do have the power to challenge the government and corporations. However, according to UN figures climate change is currently responsible for 300,000 deaths per year. We need to seriously rethink any plans to use new coal, we need to be focusing on renewable green energy”.
Should the project have gone ahead, the coal units would have been be the first to be built for more than 20 years.
Dave Davidson, a resident of the peninsula said “I’m cautious about Eons real agenda. Are they trying to apply pressure to Ed Milliband to make a decision or are we really seeing the change we have been working for. I hope for the future of our planet that it’s the latter.”
Jill Osborne of Tipping Point said “Its been amazing working alongside such committed locals. The people of Medway certainly know how to mount a resistance. This victory will be a huge inspiration to climate change campaigners across the world.”
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- Climate Camp responds
Wednesday, 7 October 2009: Climate activists celebrated victory against carbon intensive coal power last night, as energy company E.ON announced they were indefinitely delaying building a new power station in Kent. The Camp for Climate Action targeted the Kingsnorth site in August 2008 1 as coal is one of the most environmentally destructive ways of generating electricity.2
E.ON’s anouncement comes as hundreds of activists prepare for the Great Climate Swoop on 17th October, when they plan to take control of Ratcliffe-on-Soar3, another coal-fired power plant operated by E.ON 4. Activists will be co-ordinating the protests through text messages and twitter, which were also used to plan the G20 protests.
Activist Dennis Stevens said: “This is an amazing victory which shows how ordinary people can take back the power from corporations and government which do not value people and the environment. We need a social movement to develop community control of our energy supply and our society; not our current system which ignores the needs of people and the climate.”
Resistance by Climate Camp activists to the Kingsnorth plan has been widespread, including the Tipping Point shop in nearby Gillingham which works within the local community to expose E.ON’s greenwash, and actions targeting E.ON’s PR firm Edelman and construction firms bidding for the Kingsnorth contract. Climate Camp activists have also dumped coal at E.ON student recruitment events, given out leaflets at FA Cup football matches sponsored by E.ON, and even disrupted a climate change conference sponsored by the energy giant itself.5
Emma Jackson added: “E.ON are finally recognising that the days of building new coal-fired power stations are over. Now we have to start shutting down existing power stations, and that’s why we’re going to Ratcliffe-on-Soar next week. And if E.ON try and bring back their plans for Kingsnorth then we’ll be back there too”.
More information on the Great Climate Swoop at Ratcliffe on Soar is available at thegreatclimateswoop.org
Ends.
NOTES FOR EDITORS
1 Kingsnorth would have been the first coal-fired power station in the UK for more than 30 years.
2 If built, Kingsnorth will emit between 6 and 8 million tons of CO2 every year. If all the coal plants proposed for Britain are built, an extra 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year would be pumped into the atmosphere, almost a tenth of the UK’s current total emissions.
3 Ratcliffe-on-Soar is the UK’s third most polluting power station and emits more CO2 each year than Costa Rica.
4 climatecamp.org.uk/actions/climate-swoop-2009
5 leaveitintheground.org.uk/?p=185
Tel: 07772861099, 07040900905 or 07932096677
Email: press@climatecamp.org.uk
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Or is it really a success?
Headlines would suggest a major ground breaking victory for the enviromental movement and the campaign against new coal with the announcement by Eon however the Tipping Point blog suggests the news might not be so significant (see http://climateshop.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/news-sinking-in/). Eon has since confirmed that it remains in the governments competition to build a demonstration carbon capture and storage facility attached to a coal-fired power plant by 2014 and since the winner is unlikely to be announced untill 2011 how can Eons annoucement be taken as a victory?
All Eon are saying is that they a likely to delay commiting cash to build the new plant for the next two or three year so that certainly does not translate as shelving the project, not when they are still seeking the billion pound gift from Ed Miliband to trial the CCS.
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What does this mean for coal in the UK?
It is the suspension of the key project that has so far defined the battle over new coal in the UK. It is therefore highly significant, but not a fatal blow. The investment freeze could be un-frozen with the right level of subsidy, and has no direct impact on the other plants being considered for CCS demonstration. There is now a new threat emerging at Hunterston in Scotland, from a consortium including RWE and Dong energy (a Danish utility) for a plant identical to Kingsnorth, and they are claiming they will build with or without Government assistance.
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Health warning — report from mainstream newspaper, hence “ecofriendly”!!!
POWER FIRM HALTS PLANS FOR NEW GREEN STATION 12th November 2009.
PLANS to build a new, ecofriendly power station in South Essex have been put on hold.
The existing power coalfired power station at Tilbury is due to be decommissioned in 2014,possibly even in 2013.It had been expected that its operators, npower, would replace it with a new power station, but on Monday they announced they wouldn’t now be making an application to build a new supercritical coal-fired power station at the site.
There has been a power station at Tilbury since 1956, with oil-fired Tilbury ‘A’ coming online to the national grid a year later.Coal-fired Tilbury ‘B’ followed in 1967 and has operated, with significant efficiency upgrades since then. The original station was mothballed in 1981 and eventually demolished in 1999, allowing the creation of the station’s innovative environmental centre.
However, a European directive which came into force on 1 January, 2008 gave the power station just 20,000 hours of operating life before it has to be replaced by a more environmentally-friendly, carbon efficient system (see further below for data *1* ). Nigel Staves, Tilbury Power Station manager, estimates that timescale will run out as early as 2013. He says: “Given the current market, we are unable to make an economic case for this new coal power station. “We are also considering the outcome of the Government’s policy review on the conditions for new coal stations. For this reason, our plans for Tilbury are now on hold. “However,we firmly believe new, more efficient, coal-fired generation should ultimately have a role to play in a low ‑carbon economy alongside gas, nuclear power and increasingly renewable energy sources. “We continue to see the Tilbury site as an important one, both to RWE npower and in terms of the future of power generation in the UK. “Given the existing energy infrastructure and proximity to areas of high demand for electricity, it is an obvious choice for power generation. “We are now reviewing potential options.”
RWE npower said this meant it would not be progressing with its bid for Government funds to develop a carbon dioxide capture demonstration plant at a new Tilbury station, but it remained interested in other opportunities to develop the technology.