Coal Fired Power Stations
The single greatest threat to the climate comes from burning coal. Coal-fired power is the most environmentally damaging means of generating electricity and is historically responsible for most of the CO2 in the air today – about half of all global carbon dioxide emissions. In carbon terms coal is the dirtiest fuel known to man.
Scotland's largest power station, Longannet on the Firth of Forth, is coal-fired, which is the most climate-wrecking form of power (image by Gary Henderson, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)
We don’t need coal to provide a secure energy supply in the future. Doing just three things will help us to deal with climate change and meet all of our future electricity needs: making our homes and buildings more energy efficient; speeding ahead with large scale wind, wave, tidal and solar power; and updating our outdated, centralised energy system by capturing the wasted heat from the fossil fuels we do use like gas and re-using it to heat our buildings and water.
Time is running out to avert a climate disaster, help to make sure that no new coal fired power stations are built.
Read: Coal’s Contibution to Climate Change – The Tyndal Center for Climate Change (PDF)
