Month: July 2024

Protest against the Peterhead Gas Power Station

Thursday 18th July 11.30 am – 1pm

Perth Concert Hall, Mill Street, PH1 5HZ

Peterhead Power Station Image by James Allan CC BY SA 2.0

There will be a protest outside the SSE AGM in opposition to the company’s disastrous plans for a new gas burning power station in Peterhead. 

SSE already owns the existing power station in Peterhead, which is Scotland’s biggest polluter. A new plant will lock people in Scotland into reliance on expensive and polluting gas for decades – well past the Scottish Government’s 2045 net zero target. 

SSE’s Annual General Meeting is for the company to celebrate their huge profits and their expansion plans.  

We want to make sure that their bosses and shareholders know that people are not happy about their plans for new fossil fuel infrastructure, so we will be holding a demonstration outside the Concert Hall venue.  It will be a family friendly protest, and everyone is welcome!  

Here are some train times that will get you in by train if you’re coming from: 
Aberdeen – 9.44 train gets into Perth at 11.15am  
Glasgow – 10.07 train gets into Perth at 11.11am  
Edinburgh – 9.39 train gets into Perth at 11.06am  
Dundee – 10.55 train gets into Perth at 11.15am 

Thanks to Friends of the Earth Scotland for this information

Government accepts “error in law” on coal mine decision!

We’re pleased to be able repost this from South Lakes Against Climate Change. The campaign against the West Cumbria coal mine had been fighting for the last decade. The case for the mine has been in tatters for a long time.

Protest at the site of the proposed mine – image by Pete Cannell CC0

The Secretary of State (SoS) of Levelling Up Housing and Communities (LUHC) has accepted that there was an “error in Law” in the previous decision to grant planning permission for the mine. The Government will therefore not be defending the decision, made in December 2022, to grant planning permission for the new mine, and will argue that it should be quashed.

In a reasoned and careful “Statement of Reasons” the SoS explains that the re-assessment is the result of the Supreme Court’s recent judgement on the “Finch v Surrey County Council” case.  It is now clear that the combustion emissions, i.e. from the use of the Cumbrian coal, should have been assessed as an indirect effect of the new extraction in the Environmental Impact Assessment. 

 If that is agreed by the Court,  the planning application goes back to the SoS to make a fresh decision.

This is HUGE news. We don’t know what West Cumbria Mining will do, but we are pretty sure that the Hearing of our legal challenges will open on the 16th July as scheduled. Only the Court can quash the planning consent, and that is what we are hoping for.