Government Dictated By Coal Company

E.on is a German company who want to build the first new coal fired power plant in the UK for 30 years, at Kingsnorth, in Kent, which will pump out as much CO2 as thirty developing countries combined. They also happen to be the biggest greenhouse gas polluter in the country, and, if a leaked email is anything to go by, they are also one of the biggest groups to have sway over government energy policy.

The email, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, was an angry diatribe from E.on to the government, saying that John Hutton, the business minister, ‘has no right to withhold approval’ of the new plant. The email then went on to instruct that the government should not include carbon capture and storage in their conditions for building the new coal plant.

The reply from the government, which took just six minutes, included four simple words: ‘Thanks. I won’t include’.

In their email, E.on also said carbon capture ‘has no current reference for viability at any scale’, exposing not only the government’s energy policy stance, but also E.on’s media strategy, based on faith in the potential of carbon capture technology to deliver ‘clean coal’, as completely hollow.

Ministers, a week after the email was written, declared that their aim would be to generate somewhere between 30 - 40% of our electricity from renewable sources, by 2020.

To read the emails and documents for yourself (pdf form), please go here:

One
Two
Three
Four
Five

Subsequently, if you wish to write to John Sutton, to request a public enquiry into Kingsnorth, you can find the details here:

Action!