Press Releases

Issued by PANiC Stations

Press Release

Power stations such as that at Blyth would “fly in the face of reason"
- without 100% CCS, they’re “killers", says local MEP.

Cross-Party Support for Campaigners on
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)

LOCAL MEP Fiona Hall (Liberal Democrat) has slammed controversial plans for another coal-fired power station at Blyth, saying they "fly on the face of reason".

And two other local MEPs, Martin Callahan (Conservative) and Stephen Hughes (Labour), have also indicated their broad support for campaigners’ opposition to the plans.

Fiona Hall MEP said: "The current proposals fly in the face of reason. The idea of starting with small-scale 'pilot plants' for CCS is a sound one. But it is vital that the pilots are designed to capture all the CO2 being emitted - otherwise we will be trialling a system which is only marginally better than the non-abated coal powered plants that exist at present.

"With climate change happening faster than anyone predicted, the fact is that coal-fired stations without 100% CCS are killers."

Dr David Golding CBE, who heads up the campaign against climate change in the North East, comments:

“We are most grateful for the support of all three of our recently re-elected MEPs. We seek changes to the Government’s proposals for new coal-fired power stations and associated demonstration units for CCS, as announced by Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change, on 23rd April 2009, with a view to minimising the UK’s future carbon emissions. The matter is of the utmost importance since coal is the most damaging to the climate of all fuels and because of the need to cut CO2 as much and as fast as possible.

“We make no criticism of CCS as such. On the contrary, we would warmly welcome appropriate efforts to develop this technology, which would be of incalculable value in the fight against climate change. What we are saying is: ‘By all means press ahead with CCS demonstration plants, but wait until the process is proven before embarking on large scale new coal build’.

“In other words, we are totally opposed to the construction of ‘death factories with fig leaves’ - new, full sized, coal-fired power stations, trying vainly to hide behind fig leaf-sized CCS units! The weasel words, ‘Clean Coal’, are routinely applied to such systems, but they are anything but clean! They would start belching out their carbon – tens of millions of tons of it every year – at the very time (around 2015) when global emissions need to begin to decline. Furthermore, if CCS cannot be made to work at an acceptable cost - and we have to face up to the fact that this possibility, however unwelcome, is a very real one – we will have shackled ourselves to these highly polluting monstrosities for decades to come.”