Walk Off Your January Blues
NO CO2AL HOLE
It’s time to say NO!
We don’t want a dirty opencast coal site adding to climate change
Join us on Saturday 10th January 2009 to march around the proposed open cast coal mine site at Newton Lane. Meet at the White Horse in Ledston at 11:30 for a 12:30 start. We will take a route on public rights of way around and through proposed open cast site. The walk should take no more than an hour.
This protest event will be a joint venture between YANC and RAGE (Residents Against Greenbelt Exploitation).
For a map of the area including location of Ledston, see the RAGE website at: www.savefairburnings.org.uk
White Horse pub postcode is WF10 2AB. Add this postcode to multimap for directions.
Multimap link: http://www.multimap.com/maps/?qs=WF10+2AB&countryCode=GB
We will have some banners and placards but please feel free to make and bring your own.
If we are to tackle climate change, coal must be left in the ground. We need clean, green renewable technology, energy efficiency and decentralised energy.
Your New Years Resolution? To stop climate change!
Filed under: Uncategorized
What does YANC say to the argument that the UK imports most of its coal from Russia, Colombia, Australia and South Africa and if its not dug up at Ledston that’s half a million tonnes more to import. Isn’t the challenge to reduce demand for coal AND for CO2 to be sequestered at the power station? How will NOT digging it up at Ledston prevent the same amount being dug up somewhere and shipped half way round the world?
As you confirm, we should be looking at reducing our demand for coal, not increasing it. The Government has recently announced we need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. However, Ed Miliband, the Climate Change Secretary wants to see a coal resurgence across the UK.
Currently, the government is thinking of giving approval to a new coal power station at Kingsnorth, in Kent. If Kingsnorth is given the go-ahead, there will be at least another six coal power stations across the UK following with applications to build new, unabated coal power stations – creating a huge increase in demand for coal and as a consequence will generate a massive increase in CO2 emissions. One of these power stations will be at Ferrybridge
Nowhere in the world is there a power station that can sequester all of its CO2. There is no industrial/commercial carbons capture and storage (CCS) technology. CCS is a white elephant, a red herring; it will keep the UK fixated on the dirtiest of all the fossil fuels. We will become locked into a carbon economy – exactly the opposite of what Lord Turner, a government climate change advisor recommends. It could be decades, if at all, before this kind of technology is proven. It’s one thing for the government to investigate if the technology will work; it’s something else to be building new, unabated coal power stations in the hope that it will work ‘at some point’ in the future.
As old coal and nuclear power stations start to close, the UK would lose about 30% of its electricity generating capacity if not replaced. However, we can replace that generating capacity with technology that already exists. Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, has confirmed that the UK could meet 40% of its electricity requirements by 2020 from technology such as renewables. The Government has also found that to reach this target, 160,000 jobs could be created. Of course, we also need to be reducing demand; so addressing energy efficiency is also a matter of paramount importance.
So yes, you are right, we need to be reducing our demand for coal, not increasing it as Ed Miliband is currently thinking. Why chase a technology that might or might not work to address climate change when alternative technologies are available in the here and now, allowing us to reduce our emissions to address climate change, create jobs, keep the lights on and increase security of supply.
In replies to YANC, the Lib Dems have said that they are “appalled that at a time when the Government should be working to reduce the UK’s emissions, ministers seem determined to allow a huge new polluting power station [Kingsnorth]” and the Conservatives have said to us that “No new coal-fired power station should be built in UK without CCS in place from outset”.
We now need real action from Government to address climate change, not empty rhetoric and certainly not a fleet of unabated coal power stations.
Chris.