Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Defense Fund has been ambivalent on CCS, while the Natural Resources
Defense Council still claims that the coal industry's advertisements for
“clean coal” technology are “a fraud” and that any use of coal remains
“dirty and dangerous” for the climate.
In the UK, environmental protesters have frequently targeted Drax, the
country's largest coal plant - and carbon emitter - while protesters have
also attempted to detain trains and ships taking coal to power stations.
In 2008-09 one particular UK target for protestors has been Kingsnorth
in Kent, where Eon, a leading energy company, planned to add a large
new coal-power plant to an existing one. In 2007 protestors entered the
existing coal plant, climbed a 200-metre chimney and painted the word
“Gordon” [for Gordon Brown, the then prime minister] on it. (After
their epic climb, they were unable to finish painting the full message
they had intended.) A year later, six of the protestors were cleared of
criminal-damage charges in a hearing in which the defence called US
climate-change scientist Jim Hansen and an Inuit from Greenland to
testify as witnesses.
It was believed to be the first case in which the defence acknowledged
the damage, but successfully argued it was justified on the grounds of try-
Greenpeace activists protest against carbon emissions in front of a coal-fired
power station west of Beijing in July 2009. Greenpeace claims that greenhouse
gas emissions from China's top three power firms outrank those of the entire
United Kingdom.
