New blow to coal plans at Hunterston

The Scottish Green MSPs welcomed today’s announcement by Danish energy company Dong that they would no longer support plans to build a new coal-fired power station at Hunterston. (1) SNP Ministers added the project to their National Planning Framework 2 some four months after consultation closed, (2) and local community campaigners announced plans last month to seek a judicial review of the Scottish Government’s decision. (3)

Dong Energy, owned by the Danish state, declared today that their emissions per kilowatt of electricity produced would have to be cut by 85% by 2040. (4) The proposed power station was to be a joint venture with Peel Energy, who will now come under increasing pressure to abandon the climate-busting scheme following last week’s collapse of E:ON’s similarly polluting project at Kingsnorth. The Greens today lodged a parliamentary motion urging Peel to drop out of the scheme too, and calling on Scottish Ministers to prioritise efforts to reduce energy demand. (5)

Patrick Harvie MSP said:

“There is a real energy gap – Scotland could be powered almost six times over by renewable energy, yet Ministers of all parties have stuck religiously to dead end technologies like nuclear and coal. It seems the private sector have been quicker to realise that the future of Scotland’s electricity network is decentralised and renewable, not opencast coal and bogus pledges to capture carbon.

“Today’s good news follows the announcements over the last seven days that neither a similar coal plant at Kingsnorth nor Heathrow’s Runway 3 will go ahead. The decks are being cleared of massively polluting projects, and SNP Ministers should think again about other expensive and unacceptable schemes like the additional Forth Road Bridge. They now have a golden opportunity to move towards the kind of successful low carbon economy Scotland needs, but it will require some courage and some actual change in policy.”

Notes

5. The Green motion lodged today in the name of Patrick Harvie MSP reads:

Doubt over future of Hunterston coal fired power station
That the Parliament welcomes the announcement that Dong Energy has withdrawn from the plan to build a new coal-fired power station at Hunterston; regards unabated coal as the most damaging and unacceptable energy source, and opposes any expansion of it in Scotland; calls upon Peel Energy, the remaining company involved in the Hunterston plan, to drop the project altogether; and calls on the Scottish Government to commit to invest in slashing energy demand instead of permitting the expansion of unsustainable and polluting energy technologies which belong in the dustbin of history.