“Kingsnorth coal power station is located in Medway, Kent. Energy company E.ON are proposing to replace the existing coal power station with a new one. Coal is the most polluting way of generating electricity and is a step backward in the UK’s commitment to fight climate change.”

“The calculation showing the carbon emissions from Ghana and Kingsnorth are outlined below:
* According to the US Energy Information Administration, Ghana produced 6.7 million tonnes of CO2 from all activities in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available. http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1co2.xls
Greenpeace have estimated that the proposed Kingsnorth coal-fired power station would produce 8.1 million tonnes of CO2 a year. This was calculated in the following way:
* It is estimated that the proposed Kingsnorth plant will be working 88% of the time according to manufacturers and 92% of the time according to PB Power consultants. Taking the average of 90%, the proposed plant will generate electricity for 7884 hours a year.
* The power station will produce at 1.6 GW x 7884 hours = 12.6 TWh/y of output
* Based on an emissions factor for new supercritical coal plant of 646g CO2/kwh - the proposed Kingsnorth coal plant will produce 8.14 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
* The DTI white paper on energy states that the UK uses 350TWh a year of electricity, which means that the proposed new Kingsnorth power plant will supply 3.6 per cent of the UK’s electricity. “Meeting the energy challenge: A white paper on energy” (May 2007 pdf). http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file39387.pdf”

“But if the new coal plant in Kingsnorth is given the go ahead in three months, the plant would emit 7m tonnes of CO2 a year - 83 times the amount football fans have saved, more than the emissions of 30 developing countries combined and the weight of 4.8bn footballs. It will also open the way for a new coal era - with devastating implications for future UK emissions.”

“If you’re a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration,” Gore told the Clinton Global Initiative gathering to loud applause.”

“Can carbon capture and storage (CCS) save the world?
Is this the silver bullet everyone’s been waiting for? Or just pie in the sky? Is capturing and storing carbon dioxide the technology breakthrough to cut greenhouse gas emissions without getting in the way of economic growth and industry’s “addiction” to fossil fuels? Or is it just a “greenwash” — a token gesture by some of the utilities responsible for so much of the world’s CO2 to try to persuade an increasingly green public that the great emitters are doing something to fight climate change?
Those are the questions that were hurled at Vattenfall executives on Tuesday when the Swedish-based utility opened the world’s first CCS plant in a small town south of Berlin called Schwarze Pumpe. The company believes it will be economically feasible before long to capture carbon, liquify it, and store it permanently on a large scale underground. This is only a small pilot plant producing enough power for a town of 20,000. But if it works, Vattenfall plans to build two conventional power plants 10 times larger in Germany and Denmark by 2015 and from 2020 they hope CCS will be a viable option for large-scale industrial use.”