These Are the Fringe MPs Against the UK's Coal Phase Out

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The UK government regularly trots out its long-standing commitment to phase out coal power by 2025 as an example of its commitment to tackling climateย change.

Evidently, this continues to really bug a fringe set of MPs.

A cross-party group of MPs have signed an early-day motion that says โ€œcoal can be, and should be, part of that UK low carbon energy generation mix beyond 2025โ€ โ€” effectively signalling their opposition to the governmentโ€™sย plan.

18 MPs initially signed the motion โ€”ย though two have since asked to have theirย signatures removed after being alerted to the motion by DeSmog UK, saying they were added inย error.

The motion was proposed by Labour MP Ronnie Campbell, a pro-Brexit, former coal miner who represents Blyth Valley in Northumberland. He has been joined by 11 of his partyย colleagues.

Their votes would appear to go against party policy. Labour has previously expressed its support for the coal phase-out, alongside additional support for cleanย energy.

Alan Whitehead, Shadow Minister for Energy and Climate Change, told DeSmog UKย that, โ€œLabour strongly believes that coal should be completely phased out by 2025, if not before, and a future Labour government would enforce thisย rule.โ€

He added that while the party โ€œsympathises with a desire to make carbon capture, storage, and utilisation (CCSU) work for conventional power, there is no prospect that CCSU can be in place before the 2025 unabated coal phase out,ย and no case for maintaining unabated coal on the system in case it comes along on theย end.โ€

โ€œHowever CCSU technology will be important in the future for a variety of industries as well as heat and power generation to create negative emissions with the potential to create new markets and business opportunitiesโ€, heย said.

Two Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MPs have also signed the motion, including notorious climate science denier Sammy Wilson.

Wilson is a former environment minister in Northern Ireland, who believes human-caused climate change is a โ€œgigantic conโ€ and an โ€œhysterical semi-religionโ€, and denies that there is a scientific consensus on the causes of climateย change.

The Conservative governmentย currently rely on DUP votes to pass key pieces of legislation inย parliament.

Three Scottish Nationalist Party MPs have also signed theย motion.

One of those is Chris Law, the SNPโ€™s Climate Justice and International Development spokesperson. Law told DeSmog UK that he voted for the motionย because:

โ€œThere are coal fired power stations in the UK and across Europe particularly in Germany andย Poland.โ€

โ€œAlthough clean coal technology is relatively new – it is emerging in Canada and the US.โ€

โ€œAs climate justice spokesperson, the biggest threat is the continuing growth of CO2 gases and itโ€™s clear that all must be done to ensure energy supply and a reduction in theseย gases.โ€

Coal is the most polluting fuel of all, and is linked to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year through associated airย pollution.

The SNP told DeSmog UK that another of its MPโ€™s, John McNally, had his name added in error and has now had his signatureย removed.

The one Liberal Democrat to sign the motion, Christine Jardine, told DeSmog UK it was also an โ€œadministrative errorโ€ and that her signature would beย removed.ย 

None of the other MPs that voted for the motion responded to DeSmog UKโ€™s request forย comment.

Conservative MP Simon Clarke was quick to criticise his colleagues on the oppositionย benches.

He tweeted that it was โ€œabsolutely wrongโ€ for Labour MPs to vote for the motion and โ€œentirely rightโ€ that the government should seek to end the use of coalย power.

Early day motions are a way for MPs to put on record their views on a particular subject, and potentially drum up support and publicity for theirย position.

There is no formal rule about how many signatures are needed for a motion to get debated on the floor of the House of Commons โ€” though the vast majority neverย are.

Campbellโ€™s early day motion states that โ€œwith commercially deployable carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) and ultra-super critical coal fired power stationsโ€, the fuel should continue to be part of the UKโ€™s energy mix beyondย 2025.

But the UK cancelled a ยฃ1 billion competition designed to catalyse the technology back in 2015, and the technology remains unproven atย scale.

Jonathan Marshall, energy analyst with the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank, told DeSmog UK that even with such technology, coal power stations would not meet the emissions limit outlined in the governmentโ€™s coal phase out plan.

He said: โ€œEven the most up to date coal technology will fall well foul of the 2025 pledge. This sort of kit does not exist in the UK, so would need to be built afresh, before being shut down inside a couple of years. No investor would give this notion the time of day, especially without a route to market for carbonย capture.โ€

The motion also says โ€œcoal provides low cost electricity generation capacity, thereby helping keep consumer bills low and maintaining electricity marketย flexibilityโ€.

But this is not true, according toย Marshall.

โ€œEven if it was built in the UK, the cost of generating power from coal is now undercut by that from gas, which is set to be increasingly outcompeted by renewableย technologies.

โ€œBuilding new capacity or propping up our ageing coal fleet even longer not only boosts pollution, but delays building new, low-cost and low-carbon generating capacity which is springing up in vast quantities around theย world.โ€

Image: VGalloval/Flickr CC BYย 2.0

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Mat was DeSmog's Special Projects and Investigations Editor, and Operations Director of DeSmog UK Ltd. He was DeSmog UKโ€™s Editor from October 2017 to March 2021, having previously been an editor at Nature Climate Change and analyst at Carbon Brief.

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