Blog Archive Archive - Page 11 of 11 - Coal Action Network

At the Regulatory Planning Committee meeting on the 17th March 2017 members voted unanimously to accept the Planning Officers report and it’s recommendation to refuse Planning permission for the opencast coal mine at Hilltop, Derbyshire.

There was also a vote on the Head of Planning’s recommendation for a full public inquiry for the appeal to be heard by HM Planning Inspectorate. This was also passed unanimously.

It was noted that, although Provectus attended the meeting, they chose not to speak in support of their application.

We must now wait for HM Planning Inspectorate to announce the date and format of the Planning appeal.

For more details see https://hilltopproject.com/ and http://coalaction.org.uk/2017/03/new-opencast-coal-mines/

(Modified from https://hilltopproject.com/2017/03/17/dcc-supports-refusal-of-planning-permission/)

While the UK government is currently considering the submissions on its proposal to phase-out coal in electricity generation in 2025, coal mining companies are still trying to ravage the earth to squeeze out more coal within Britain.

Despite closing almost all of their Scottish opencast mines, Hargreaves have said that they intend to mine at Field House, near the villages of Pittington and West Rainton. Local residents campaigned against this application for several years, it was only approved on appeal.

The area is currently farmland. One of the nearest houses to the opencast site is occupied by an elderly couple who are already suffering from respiratory illness. There is a real worry that the dust, stress and disruption from the mine could seriously worsen the couple’s health.

Given that coal only contributed 10% of the UK’s electricity generation in 2016, and the government are supposed to be phasing it out completely this mine desperately needs to be stopped.

In North East Derbyshire there is an application for planning permission at Hilltop, near Clay Cross and Tupton. 3,000 people live within 500m of the site, which is currently open fields.

The Hilltop planning application is now going to be dealt with by H.M. Planning Inspectorate rather than Derbyshire County Council. Their recommendation is that this application is refused.

Given that we need to fossil fuels in the ground to avoid the worst effects of climate change this application simply cannot be allowed to be approved.

If you would like to add your comments to the discussion you can do so by this Thursday. Advice on how to do so is available from Hilltop Action Group, here. There is a planning meeting on Friday 17^th March, at County Hall in Matlock, although a decision will only be announced later.

Up in Northumberland communities living near to Highthorn, are preparing for a public inquiry into the application which Northumberland County Council stupidly approved last year. This application was ‘Called In’ by the Secretary of State in what is thought to be the first application to be Called In on the grounds of climate change.

There are two other applications still looking for approval. Dewley Hill is another application from Banks, the company behind the Highthorn application. Miller Argent who run the biggest opencast in the UK Ffos-y-fran are still looking to mine adjacent to the site at Nant Llesg.

These three situations show that although the coal industry is no longer thriving, there is also the potential for new areas to be ravaged in the pursuit of a mineral which is justifiably going out of favour. Communities across the UK’s coal mining areas are continuing to their amazing battles to protect their local areas and limit the impacts of climate change. Let’s do what we can to help them win.

In response to a letter published in several newspapers local to Aberthaw coal fired power station, we have written RWE an open letter. You can read the original letter here.

28th February 2017

Dear RWE,

Thank you for your response to our concerns around the health impacts of Aberthaw power station. We share with you how difficult it is to read reports of health-related illnesses and deaths linked to your operations. To have to ask yourself if Aberthaw causes more harm than good must be uncomfortable.

We see you have limited choices and think you must defend your company and actions. We acknowledge the role that Aberthaw has played in the local community in terms of job creation and in providing electricity. That is significant.

However, for us, it is important that the local community has a comprehensive and undistorted view of the plant’s impacts in order to be able to know at what cost this contribution has come.

Aberthaw has been producing NOx, SOx and particulates since it started operating. There are no safe level for these chemicals. Legal limits are put in place to curb the worse of this pollution, not for spurious reasons, but to protect human health. The European Court of Justice recently ruled that Aberthaw has been emitting NOx pollution well above these legal limits. Aberthaw has been in breach of EU limits for over eight years.

Your stated boiler upgrades will barely bring the plant under the reduced-hours, extended limit for NOx, and you have already shunned the fitting of the Best Available Technology, SCR, that would substantialy reduce the NOx pollution. Aberthaw will still be emitting a significant level of NOx after your improvements.

This pollution enters our lungs and blood and have been linked to stroke, lung cancer, heart and respiratory diseases.

Friends of the Earth estimate that 400 people a year die from Aberthaw’s NO2 pollution. For us it is important, even though an estimate, to name how many people are dying because every life matters.

Even with reduced operating hours and the subsequent reduction in emission levels, there will still be health impacts. However you quantify these, Aberthaw power station will still be directly responsible for ill health and premature death for as long as it operates.

How many deaths and how much illness is an acceptable level of collateral damage to allow this ancient, inefficient power station to continue to generate electricity?

We invite you to take the other choice, the braver choice: act to protect peoples health and the climate, ensure a Just transition for your workers, close Aberthaw and restore the site, as envisaged when it was built as a short term project.

Coal Action Network
United Valleys Action Group
Reclaim the Power

On the final day of the government coal phase-out consultation, we gathered with friends and allies from Friends of the Earth, London Mining Network, Biofuelwatch, Fossil Free UCL and more, in a creative demonstration to say ‘Ditch Coal Now!’

Just days earlier, the government announced further massive handouts to keep coal-fired power stations burning. The government is expected to put £453million into propping up the industry over a 4-year period; causing 2,900 premature deaths per year from air pollution, on top of prolonging the health impacts on local people from the open-cast mines. Not to mention human rights atrocities associated with coal from Colombia and Russia, to be burned in UK power stations.

These government handouts are occurring alongside a supposed ‘coal phase-out’ which they claim will mean we see an end to coal 2025. However, a glance at the phase-out plan reveals a host of loopholes, not to mention an acceptance of the ‘capacity markets’ which distribute the handouts which keep these monstrosities burning.

For those on the front lines of coal extraction, 2025 is not soon enough to end coal. And a plan that funds power stations to keep polluting and causing more deaths every day doesn’t sound like a plan to us.

Despite this, it is possible to imagine that if your job was to engage with energy production in terms of numbers, statistics and economic measures, then the human consequences of burning coal might seem distant and removed. How do you encounter some of that reality when you work in a Whitehall office?

By carefully placing 2,900 small clay figures outside BEIS (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy), we held a space for those lives which could be saved every year if we ditched coal now.

Handmade by friends and strangers of all abilities in a community in Bristol, which receives some of the impacts of air pollution from Aberthaw power station, the figures became more than ‘just figures’ – they were all unique, each person putting a bit of themselves into each model they made.

We were joined by Seb Munoz from War on Want, who gave first-hand accounts of the atrocities in Colombia associated with UK coal. We heard from the PCS Union about how the movement against coal and Union struggles can unite. Guy Shrubsole from Friends of the Earth told us about the incredible community resistance to opencast mining in Druridge, and we heard from BiofuelWatch about how we could resist Drax, the ‘Goliath’ power station.

On top of this we shared a unique experience in creating this sculpture with all those who came; who carefully gave their attention to each of these lives, bringing the human consequences of coal into focus for the BEIS employees on their lunchbreak. Department workers who ventured out reacted with curiosity and openness, some were keen to understand and share knowledge, compare information and find common ground.

Despite the uncertainty surrounding the government’s coal strategy, one thing remains clear; the movement to end coal now is creative, dynamic, thoughtful, diverse and determined.

On 8th February, the final day of the Coal phase-out consultation, we will be turning up at BEIS (Dept for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy) to demand an end to coal now.

10 Reasons to object to the government’s 2025 coal phase-out plan

1.For the 2,900 people who will lose their lives each year from the air pollution caused by coal alone, 2025 is not soon enough.
2. The plan makes no mention of the impacts of mining for UK coal in Russia, Colombia and the U.S. The indigenous Shor people in Russia have been driven out of their villages and are victims of cultural genocide and state persecution due to the Russian mines which export coal to UK power stations. For these people, 2025 is not soon enough either.
3. For the Colombian villagers who have been forcibly displaced as a result of UK mining interests, by companies which are allegedly complicit in paramilitary assassinations, 2025 is not soon enough.
4.For endangered species of the Appalachian mountain region in the U.S, one of the most biodiverse regions in the world, 2025 will be too late to stop the open-top mountain removal mining that provides UK coal.

5. Chris and Alison Austin, who live near an open cast coal mine in Merthyr Tydfil, spoke at our demonstration at Aberthaw: ‘I can’t go and sit out on my front porch because there is black dust in the air covering everything, and loud explosions. It’s like that 19 hours a day.’ For Alison, Chris and their community 2025 is not soon enough.
6. Co-firing coal with biomass is proposed as a solution. In terms of net climate change impacts, biomass is not always cleaner than coal.
7. The government continues to offer power stations large payments in the Capacity Market Auctions so that they can stay open, and seek to prevent them from closing by threatening fines. Instead of working with the market conditions which could lead to an earlier coal phase-out, the government is propping up the industry.
8. The plan states that it will not proceed to impose the end of coal by 2025 until the energy gap can be plugged elsewhere. Without proper investment in renewable energy, or serious efforts to reduce the UK’s demand for energy, the goal of 2025 could be pushed back and back on the basis that we ‘can’t meet demand’ without fossil fuels, of which there is ample evidence to the contrary.
9. There is also nothing in the plan about support for people who lose their jobs as a result of coal closures, other than ‘working with JobcentrePlus’. Here the government ignores the tremendous work of UK and international unions to articulate principles by which a transition away from fossil fuels should occur. Making a stand for these principles must also be the work of the climate justice movement, and the plan is incomplete without them.
10.The plan is not legally binding and the current wording allows a future secretary of state to postpone or suspend the arrangements.

All in all, this is not a coal phase-out which meets the urgent needs of communities in the UK and abroad. It does not do enough to safeguard public health or workers’ rights.

Even if it did, the government’s continued handouts to coal-fired power stations and lack of firm commitment in this plan mean there is potential for a 2025 phase-out to not be enacted.

Ditch Coal Now : London 02.08.17

Don’t Delay an End to Coal

In solidarity with the communities suffering the impacts of UK mining, and to send a clear message that coal must end now, we invite you to join us outside BEIS on 08.02.17 for a creative demonstration on the final day of the coal phase-out consultation.

On Saturday (January 28th) Aberthaw power station stopped vehicle movements on their only access road to the power station.

145 people came to a demonstration on the beach in front of the power station. It was organised by Reclaim the Power, United Valleys Action Group, Bristol Rising Tide and Coal Action Network. People gathered to demand that Aberthaw power station close and that jobs are found for the current highly skilled employees in the green economy. After a rousing rally with music and food on the beach, the gathered crowd walked to the main entrance of the power station.

We were met by a complete lack of vehicles on the main access road to the power station. Normally there are HGVs and other vehicles on this road every couple of minutes. On Saturday none were seen between 12.30 and 3.30pm and potentially there were none all day. The power station knew that the demonstrators were coming and may have cancelled all deliveries and the removal of coal ash in anticipation of direct action.

This is the fourth of a series of actions against the power station, the previous one was a demonstration at RWE npower, who operate the power station’s head quarters earlier in the same week.

Marianne Owens from the PCS union said, “It’s working class people who suffer from this dirty energy,” as she addressed the crowd from the sea wall. She demonstrated that moving to green energy would create more jobs than exist in the fossil fuel industry.

As Chris and Alyson Austin held hands and addressed the crowd, Alyson Austin described how dust from Ffos-y-fran opencast coal mine pervades her house. Dust is ruining the enjoyment of her area. Communities living near opencast coal mines now experience similar illnesses to deep miners when underground mines operated.

Anne Harris, from the Coal Action Network said, “Saturday’s demonstration at Aberhaw power station sent a clear signal to its operators RWE npower and the government, that the public demand that this power station is promptly closed. Children, working people, pensioners, Welsh people and those from as far away as Machylleth and London gathered on the beach, under the sea wall before walking to the power station main entrance, where vehicle movements were stopped by the power station operators.”

There were a number of angry local residents at the demonstration. They feel like they’ve been sacrificed to this power station, as highlighted by this comment on the Coal Action Network’s web page about the protest local resident. Roy Shropshire said, ” We have lived in Rhoose for almost 40 years, complained many times to the EPA/NRW [Environment Agency and National Resources Wales] of what we considered to be unacceptable levels of pol[l]ution. We have never been informed that this pollution was dangerous. Especially, the fact that we have made it clear the fall out has been over, around and inside our property when the wind blows form the power station in our direction. Clearly, there has been a failure to inform us of the known dangers and a disregard to our health and well being. Clearly, those responsible should now be made accountable.”

RWE kills 400 people a year, 67 of them in Wales as it pumps out huge quantities of toxic nitrogen oxide. The government lost a case at the European Court of Justice for allowing the power station to poison so many people. UK government had given RWE npower an exemption to EU air quality rules, which should never have been granted.

RWE has previously said it intends to address the issues of air pollution, but as Chris and Alyson Austin said on Saturday, “no amount of deaths from this dinosaur of a power station are acceptable.”

Measures being considered early last year included reducing the power stations operating hours; off-shoring the issues of opencast coal mines by importing coal, most likely from Russia and Colombia as less NOx is produced when this coal is burnt, and scrubbing the nitrogen oxides from the emissions. More efficient NOx removal has been ruled out by the power station as it is more expensive than the quick fix Aberthaw want.

All of the protesters at Aberthaw on Saturday agreed on the most important cause of action, close down Aberthaw without delay!

The next protest will take place outside of Department of Business, Industry and Industrial Strategy in London on 8th February. The government are currently running a coal phase-out consultation, where they propose closing the power stations like Aberthaw in 2025. Coal Action Network and our international partners think that this is too slow for the coal-field communities and demand Aberthaw and the other ancient coal power stations close sooner.

145 from across South Wales Machnlleth London and Bristol came to Aberthaw today to demand that the power station is promptly shut.

Tomorrow outside Aberthaw power station, Reclaim the Power, Bristol Rising Tide and United Valley’s Action Group will be with the Coal Action Network to demand “Shut Aberthaw: Green jobs now!”

From 1pm Saturday 28th January at Aberthaw Power Station, Leys beach car park, Limpert Bay, West Aberthaw, CF62 4ZW

100 protesters are expected to march on Aberthaw power station demanding its prompt closure and in support of a just transition to renewable energy in South Wales. We’ll hear from inspiring local campaigners on green jobs, air quality and the battle against opencast coal mining, enjoy hot soup, hear some live music, and have an active legal protest to keep us warm. Dress for cold weather and bring your friends and family.

Trade union representatives, renewable energy companies, air quality and climate campaigners are all expected to speak at the rally with people travelling from South Wales and further afield including Bristol, and London.

Chris and Alyson Austin, from the United Valleys Action Group and Residents Against Ffos-y-fran say, “We need to put something positive in place of Aberthaw. It is inevitable Aberthaw is going to close. Renewable energy could provide thousands of jobs if only the governments would take the blinkers off and look to the future instead of the past. The UK and Welsh governments need to invest in Green jobs to provide alternative, highly skilled employment and put mechanisms in place now for Aberthaw workers to be re-skilled. You can’t just sling them out. That isn’t fair.”

Coal Action Network argue that dirty, inefficient power stations such as Aberthaw are not needed. A government commission recently gave support to offshore tidal lagoon projects in Swansea Bay which would provide predictable energy using underwater turbines. Onshore wind in Wales could create up to 2000 jobs whilst upgrading the energy efficiency of homes in Wales would create 6,300 direct jobs, slash our heating bills and reduce overall demand for power generation.

Reclaim the Power and the Coal Action Network are trying to engage with unions who represent coal workers, such as Unite, in order to open a meaningful dialogue with them about how we force the government and power companies to plan for a transition for highly skilled coal workers in a system where electricity is generated by renewables.

Aberthaw is Europe’s dirtiest power station. Nitrogen oxides and particulate matter contribute to respiratory illnesses for people living in Cardiff, Newport, Swansea, Barry, and as far away as Bristol, Poole, Bournemouth and Swindon. Aberthaw was recently found to have breached of European pollution limits for several years.

Patrick Lanham, from Reclaim the Power in Cardiff says, “Communities in this area are all affected by pollution from this one power station. Aberthaw is killing us and RWE Npower are not doing enough to address this tragic fact. Their upgrades, to date, will only reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by 20% at best, meaning that 320 people a year will still be killed by air pollution from this dinosaur power plant. We’re calling for investment in community renewables and green jobs accessible to coal-industry workers and the prompt closure of Aberthaw power station.”

Aberthaw is also a major threat to the planet emitting 8.5 million tonnes of CO₂ in 2013. The UK Government is currently consulting on closing “unabated” coal power stations by 2025.

Patrick Lanham adds, “The government’s proposals are too slow for communities on the front line of coal extraction and climate change. This demonstration is our submission to the coal phase-out consultation. No more deaths, no more coal, yes to a supported transition for coal workers to clean energy systems.”

Activists from Reclaim the Power descended on RWE npower’s Swindon offices on Monday 23rd January, as part of an on-going campaign by Reclaim the Power, Coal Action Network and Bristol Rising Tide, against Aberthaw power station.

Banners reading, “RWE kills,” “End Coal Now,” “Aberhaw is choking us” and “Close Aberthaw” perfectly articulated why we were there. RWE npower has two buildings on Windmill Business park. The company runs Aberthaw coal power station in South Wales, which kills 400 people a year from air pollution.

The aim of the day was to bring the campaign, to close Aberthaw power station, to the people who will decide the future of the power station. It simply isn’t acceptable that Aberthaw coal power station produces the quantity of nitrogen oxides that it does and yet continues to operate. In the first half of 2016 the plant had already emitted 11,003 tonnes of NOx, almost four times the 4,800 tonnes permitted under European Union Industrial Emissions Directive limits.

200 leaflets were distributed to workers and visitors, including by one of Reclaim the Power’s team who got into the building despite it being on security shut down. All of the three main doors were occupied by campaigners and workers were only allowed admittance via the emergency exits.

Meanwhile, UK coal is costing 2,900 lives per year due to air pollution, with people who live by UK power stations most at risk. The UK also needlessly benefits from environmental and human rights abuses carried out by coal-mining companies in Russia and Colombia.

Coal, and other fossil fuels such as oil and gas, contribute to catastrophic climate change which is already costing lives and habitats worldwide.

Throughout the day we will create a public sculpture to recognise the lives which could be saved each year if we quit coal.

Join us any time from 11am to help create this, or come at 12 noon for the demo to demand the UK Government ends coal now, with decisive and legally binding action, to cut carbon and save lives.