Longannet Power Station

Longannet Power Station is a 2,304 megawatt coal-fired power station owned and operated by Scottish Power.

Background
The power station was first commissioned in 1970.

Proposed replacement
Faced with an aging plant, Scottish Power proposed to build a new coal-fired power station. In October 2011 the UK government announced "a decision has been made not to proceed with Longannet but to pursue other projects with the £1bn funding made available by the government."

(See Longannet Power Station (Proposed) for more details.)

Estimated cost of air pollution from plant
A 2011 analysis by the European environment agency (EEA), 'Revealing the costs of air pollution from industrial facilities in Europe,' estimates that air pollution from industry costs Britain £3.4bn-£9.5bn a year in health and environmental damage. When CO2 costs are included, the figure rises to £9.5bn-£15.5bn. The industrial facilities covered by the analysis include large power plants, refineries, manufacturing combustion and industrial processes, waste and certain agricultural activities. Emissions from power plants contributed the largest share of the damage costs (estimated at €66–112 billion).

A small number of individual facilities cause the majority of damage costs. Three quarters of the total damage costs were caused by the emissions from just 622 industrial facilities – 6 % of the total number. Longannet Power Station, Cottam, Ratcliffe Power Station, and West Burton power stations together emit more than 30m tonnes of CO2 and other pollutants and cost the economy up to £2.3bn a year.

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