U.K. Facing Legal Climate Challenge Over New Gas Plant Permit
U.K. Facing Legal Climate Challenge Over New Gas Plant Permit
(Bloomberg) -- Britain will have to justify in court why it approved new natural gas-fired generation capacity at a Drax Group Plc power plant after a legal challenge from a group of environmental lawyers.
ClientEarth said the U.K. High Court approved a Judicial Review of the October planning decision that would allow Drax to convert two of its coal-fired units at its Yorkshire plant into four gas turbines with an output capacity of as much as 3.6 gigawatts.
Gas has long been seen as a bridging fuel in the U.K.’s quest to cut pollution and deploy more renewable energy. But with Britain adopting a net-zero emissions target into law, environmentalists are turning their focus to new fossil-fuel projects, whatever the source.
ClientEarth wants to overturn the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy decision to allow Drax to convert to gas, which the planning authority recommended be blocked on climate concerns. Drax said in October that the project would produce more reliable and efficient energy as well as creating 800 new jobs.
“The Secretary of State has ignored the recommendations of her own planning authority, and her decision is at odds with the government’s own climate change plans to decarbonize in a cost-effective manner,” Sam Hunter Jones, a ClientEarth lawyer, said in a statement.
Drax’s plant in Yorkshire, England, used to be the U.K.’s biggest coal station. Four of its six units have been converted to use biomass, and Drax aims to be carbon negative by 2030 with the help of carbon capture technology.
Although permission was granted for Drax to add 3.6 gigawatts, the company is currently only looking at half that amount. The conversion is also dependent on Drax securing a capacity-market agreement in the U.K.‘s program to pay plants to stay open in times of high demand.
“Drax’s carbon-negative ambition could be achieved with new, high-efficiency gas power capacity as part of our portfolio of flexible generating assets,” a Drax spokesperson said in an email. “It could support the continued decarbonization of the energy system, helping the U.K. on its path to net-zero by 2050, in line with the government’s policies.”
ClientEarth has had success in challenging the government’s clean air policies, even convincing Supreme Court judges that lawmakers were failing to implement safe pollution targets. This suit is the first time the group of environmental lawyers have targeted a specific planning decision in the U.K.
Elsewhere in Europe, the charity won a challenge in Greece over the permit renewal for two coal-fired plants earlier this month and has filed a suit against Poland’s biggest power plant to stop burning lignite or install carbon capture technology.
BEIS didn’t immediately comment on the suit.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeremy Hodges in London at jhodges17@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net, Andrew Reierson, Helen Robertson
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.