Opponents of new power stations naive, says Wicks

By Jean Eaglesham, Chief Political Correspondent
Published: August 1 2008 03:00

MPs, green groups and scientists who oppose a new generation of coal-fired power stations are "wrong", naive and against the "force of reason", Malcolm Wicks, energy minister, told the Financial Times yesterday.
In provocative comments that underline the government's determination to sanction a new generation of coal-fired power stations, Mr Wicks said a "lay person" might think energy policy was "about windmills". But "the rather boring fact is that the world is going to be burning lots of coal".
The government is facing a growing wave of opposition to its support for coal, centred on Eon's contentious £1.5bn proposal to build a plant at Kingsnorth in Kent. The first coal-fired power station in the UK for more than two decades, the development has become a rallying point for environmental campaigners, who portray it as an acid test of Gordon Brown's green credentials.
Protesters will start a week-long "climate camp" at Kingsnorth on Sunday in a bid to block the Eon proposal. Mr Wicks was dismissive of the protest. "Whatever people might wish, whatever people singing songs in the sunshine at summer camps might idealise, the world is going to be using lots of coal in the future," he said.
But ministers are under increasing pressure to block the application. More than 225 MPs, including 70 Labour backbenchers, have signed a parliamentary motion calling for the Kingsnorth proposal to be referred to a public inquiry. A Labour-dominated select committee has said there should be a moratorium on new coal-fired power stations until technology to cut their carbon emissions - known as carbon capture and storage - has been proved commercially.
Mr Wicks admitted the government would fight the political battle over coal from a position of general political weakness. "We [Labour] are in an extremely serious situation," he said. But he insisted the government's support for new stations had a sound intellectual base. "The force of reason is with us."
Calls for a moratorium were "wrong for two or three reasons", he asserted. "We have to have regard, to put it mildly, to supply - the good British people are not going to thank us if we tackle global warming by the country getting darker."
Coal was needed to reduce the UK's future dependence on gas imports from some "fairly unstable parts of the world". There were technical reasons why fossil fuels were needed to smooth peaks and troughs in other energy supplies, he added. "It's coal where you can turn the tap on more quickly than other sources."
Mr Wicks also argued it would be counter-productive for the government to try to take a green lead by banning new coal stations, when global demand for coal was forecast to increase by more than 70 per cent between 2005 and 2030. "There are countries with a huge stack of coal where demand is increasing - are any of us able to say to the Chinas of this world, please don't burn coal? I think I know what the answer would be."
The solution instead lay in "developing as quickly as possible technology round clear coal".
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008