Against a long backdrop of the LibLabConsensus trying to out-do each other in the MMGW-f***wittery stakes, comes this in today's FT:
Hutton eyes coal to replace imports of gas
John Hutton, business secretary, yesterday paved the way for a new generation of coal-fired power stations, claiming Britain could not wait for new clean-coal technology to come on stream... He said the Conservative policy on these plants - which would place a limit on carbon emissions - was "a potential threat to our energy security"... But Alan Duncan, shadow business secretary, said the intent of the government to develop coal "at any cost", was a decision that would leave future generations with a "massive carbon headache". He added: "That means they can only keep the lights on by being dirty."
What a turnaround! It only seems like a few days ago that The Goblin King heralded windpower as The Next Big Thing ... oh, it was.
Of course, John Hutton seems to have overlooked the EU's Large Combustion Plants Directive, which means we can't build them anyway, but hey.
Quick update
7 hours ago
6 comments:
Carbon headache?
I must put that on my lists of excuses....
Will Labour bring Scargill back to direct this new initiative?
LCPD ... errm, no Mark, you can build new coal, provided the plant scrubs out the sulphur and particulates (dust) - which all new plant will, easily, and quite a bit of older plant does, after conversion
as we've agreed, when you become supreme dictator of the galaxy and I your humble energy minister, we will replace old (inefficient) coal with new super-hyper efficient coal, and save £££, CO2 and everything else !
NuLab is getting really worried about the lights going out - as well they might be
little Alan D may need to think carefully on this one: he may actually end up in charge of this lot ...
Hey, don't bother with building any power stations, I'm happy to pay more and more and more and more and more to Russian gangsters and gangsters in the board rooms.
But, but, but ... if you scrub out all the sulphur dioxide, your roses get black spot.
Nick, your energy policy was adopted into the MW manifesto when it came out. The only bit that worried me was "... will be genuinely economic very soon."
That to me smacks of a loophole for subsidies, but hey.
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