FIRST THE credit crunch, now the energy crunch. Just as household electricity bills go stratospheric the first coal-fired power station to be built in Britain for more than 30 years has been approved by Medway Council in Kent. The £1 billion plant at Kingsnorth, near Ashford, will be coal-burning - and carbon-producing - so is hardly an example to India or coal-rich China on how not to overheat the planet. But it will be built if only for one reason - to keep the lights on in the south of England.
Kingsnorth is an example of how the government is caught between preaching green but acting black. The final say on whether the plant will go ahead rests with the government’s business secretary, John Hutton. Faced with the prospect of the UK becoming over-reliant on foreign oil and gas and committed to cutting CO2 emissions, the feeling is that Hutton will approve Kingsnorth along with a generation of nuclear plants.
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