Lies and lies and lies

The website "no new coal" is reporting the 30 000 could be made homeless by Kingsnorth.

Pardon?

I'm not sure if these people quite understand how many emissions any new Kingsnorth will be responsible for (they certainly don't realise it will be responsible for 20% less than the current power station).

Let's have a look.

The UK is responsible for around 3.5% of global emissions.
The electricity sector is responsible for around 35% of UK emissions.
Perhaps 30% is generated by coal (over the course of a year, although Coal is mainly used in the winter as the price of gas rises) and 40-45% is generated by gas.
Coal emits CO2 at just over twice the rate that gas does, so it's responsible for just 60% of UK electrical emissions - or 0.8% of global CO2 emissions.

Meanwhile there are, of course, more than one coal fired power station in the UK - currently 20. A new Kingsnorth will be at least 20% more efficient than these current stations. This means a new Kingsnorth, per year, will approximately be responsible for 0.03% of global emissions.

Okay this is a back of the envelope calculation done at 8am, but all the same - 0.03% of global emissions - and remember that China still has a long way to go in expanding it's coal fired fleet.

Update: I've just had another think about this. No new coal is claiming that 30 000 will be turned into refugees by 0.03% of emissions. Well this suggests that 100 million people worldwide are going to loose their homes because of global warming. The worlds population is 6600 million (give or take). This means that one in 66 is going to loose their house from global warming - according to these figures.

I still just don't believe them.

Another thing - I don't believe that penalties should fall equally across all carbon emitters. We need steel and electricity to do anything. Rather those trips to the shops where people drive rather than cycle or walk should be hit the most. Double count those with refugees rather than making a political statement about a commodity that we all need...

...and which generates around 0.03% of global emissions.