Aberthaw
Aberthaw power station is the biggest polluter in Wales, scoring top of the league not only for emissions of carbon dioxide, but also for nitrous oxide and sulphur dioxide, both harmful greenhouse gases. In October the plant announced its plans to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology ahead of a competition for government funding. Even the most optimistic predictions, however, cannot foresee the technology being available to apply for a long, long while.
Shell, an enthusiast about the technology, doesn’t foresee CCS being available for implementation until 2050 at the earliest. By this date, the chance for humanity to avert lethal, runaway climate change will be long gone. But this prediction may be overly optimistic - as UK Chancellor Alistair Darling has put it, commercially viable carbon capture and storage technology “might never become available”. If coal-fired stations are allowed to continue polluting instead of being phased out, in other words, it is game over for UK climate policy.
As James Hansen, the NASA scientist and leading climate change researcher has put it, burning coal has the capacity to take us to a drastically different planet. An alternative is readily available - renewable energy has been shown to be the most popular option with the British public, and Britain has been shown to be capable of switching to renewable energy production quickly.
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