Money to burn on green farce while our coal goes to waste

BRITAIN’S current energy policies seem so unbelievably flawed that I really do doubt the intelligence of our politicians and the path they are taking.

It seems that every time I turn on the radio or watch television I am bombarded with dire warnings of the damage humans are inflicting on our amazing world; warned of the continual impact of climate change – previously called global warming, and horrified at those who are guilty of churning out obnoxious CO2 emissions which will only lead to our destruction.

Well, in the last 16 years world temperatures have rocketed by, now let’s see, oh no, they haven’t increased at all. Phew, that’s a relief, the trouble is this prediction of very destructive global warming resulted in the 1997 Kyoto agreement, with UK consumers having to pay billions of pounds to subsidise the green energy industry.

Now, our MPs are to vote in the forthcoming Energy Bill, to slash CO2 emissions by 90 per cent by 2030 to control this non-existent global warming. Tory MP Tim Yeo, who is behind this Bill, has over the last two years been paid almost £250,000 by “green” companies, this is in addition to his MP’s salary. Is there hope that Lord Deben (John Gummer), who is the chairman of a major firm who are building a new power plant, will address this folly? But, wait for it, what is this new power plant – you’ve guessed it – the world’s biggest wind farm!

Britons pay around £100 each year to pay for these subsidies, so when you receive a huge energy bill don’t just blame the energy company as the Government has grabbed its share of your money. Electricity prices in Europe, have increased by almost 40 per cent in the last decade due to green taxes and crass subsidies, but in America they’ve gone down by 10 per cent, but, then America is fracking for very valuable and abundant gas. If this gives Europe a competitive “edge”, my grey matter must have stopped working.

And, now Drax power station, previously the second largest coal-fired power station in Europe, and the cleanest, will have £700m of taxpayers’ money spent on converting its six generating units to biomass operation. The chief executive of the biomass operator, Dorothy Thompson, says that three of the six units should be in operation by the end of 2014.

The three units will burn 7.5 million tonnes of wood pellets imported mainly from North America and Canada, so when all six units are commissioned 15 million tonnes will be imported annually. This operation will save on the “horrid” pollution that the clean-coal Drax power station would have caused

But let’s properly examine the situation and the claimed environmental savings importing wood pellets will bring. From the source in America the wood pellets are transported to the port of embarkation. Is this a distance of 50 miles? 100 miles? 200 miles? Are they sent by road or rail? The “greens” conveniently omit to tell us. But, the farce continues. Sending 15 million tons of pellets annually involves around 320 sea journeys totalling about 1.5 million miles before reaching British ports.

The nearest port to Drax is Hull, which is far further away than the previously used northern coalfields, so this journey alone will add to pollution of the environment.

The huge distances of 1.5 million miles of importing the product from America were totally discounted, as they were compared with the alternative option of thousands of road trips from Scotland. Why such a deception is required probably indicates the appalling weakness of the whole operation, for Drax was a coal fired power station, receiving coal sent by rail, not road, over very short distances from nearby pits, with the large Kellingley pit the main supplier only 10 miles away, certainly not by road from Scotland. How anyone can believe this new operation is an improvement and and is helping to save the planet is very deluded.

Drax used our own coal, it didn’t need any imports and the coal industry gave employment to thousands of miners. With very advanced clean coal technology and our own very abundant reserves of coal this was a perfect situation, so why do we have to alter it? Why didn’t we spend the £700m on clean coal technology?

Have we been informed how much 15 million tonnes of imported wood pellets will cost us as this must be simply staggering and mean even heftier fuel bills for all of us. Meanwhile Britain has failed to accept a £400m grant from the EU to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS) for the Don Valley Power Project. We must be stark raving bonkers

At least Britain’s future generations will be provided with one huge inheritance – three billion tons of abandoned coal.