Kingsnorth power station

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Seen from across the River Medway Estuary

Kingsnorth power station is a 1,985-megawatt dual-fired coal or oil power station in Medway, Kent, England, on the Hoo Peninsula. The station, constructed between 1963 and 1973 by the Central Electricity Generating Board,^[1] is owned and operated by energy firm E.ON UK. It is capable of operating on either coal or oil though in practice oil is used only as a secondary fuel or for startup.^[2]

From 1975 to the early 1980s, Kingsnorth was linked to the London power grid by HVDC Kingsnorth, one of the few examples of high-voltage direct current transmission then in use.

Kingsnorth has been opted out of the Large Combustion Plants Directive which means it will only be allowed to run for up to 20,000 hours after 1 January 2008 and must close by 31 December 2015.^[3]

The power station has been selected as the site for the 2008 Camp for Climate Action, in common with eight other camps globally that will be targeting coal.^[4]

1 Kingsnorth Units 5 and 6
- 1.1 Criticism
2 References
3 External links

[edit] Kingsnorth Units 5 and 6

E.ON currently propose constructing two new 800 MW supercritical coal-fired power units on the site, to be operational "as early as 2012".^[5] If completed, this would be the first new coal powered plant in the UK since the completion of Drax power station in 1986.

E.ON expects the supercritical units to reduce carbon dioxide emissions per unit of electricity by around 20%, as compared to the existing subcritical plant.^[6] E.ON also says the new units will be "capture ready" to allow the option of retrofitting with carbon capture and storage (CCS). Their environmental statement reads:

"[CCS] will be considered as an option...subject to the process of CCS being allowed by law and incentivised by a suitable framework and technological hurdles for the process being overcome"^[6]

On 31st March 2008 E.ON announced^[7] the new Kingsnorth power station would be used in a bid for the Government's Carbon Capture and Storage competition^[8]. In addition E.ON proposed that the planning decision should be delayed until after the Government has completed its consultation on CCS.

[edit] Criticism

The building of ‘Kingsnorth 2’ has come under much criticism from campaigning groups including Greenpeace, Christian Aid and the World Development Movement^[9]^[10]^[11]. In addition the WWF, The Royal Society and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds^[12]^[13] object to the lack of CCS in the proposal. Greenpeace is particularly skeptical about the viability of CCS and its ability to reduce emissions^[14].

Criticism comes from the large greenhouse gas emissions associated with burning coal and its effect of the atmosphere and global warming.

Much of the criticism comes from the inefficiencies of coal power plants compared to gas power plants particularly combined heat and power plants. Christian Aid has noted that the emissions from the plant will be over 10 times the annual emissions from Rwanda.^[10]

Climate scientist and head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies James Hansen has condemned the building of new coal power stations, stating:

“In the face of such threats [from climate change] it is madness to propose a new generation of power plants based on burning coal, which is the dirtiest and most polluting of all the fossil fuels. We need a moratorium on the construction of coal-fired power plants and we must phase out the existing ones within two decades.”^[15]

However other statements indicate James is more receptive to coal if carbon capture is incorporated: