Rugeley Power Station to shut down with 170 job losses
The power station that has towered over Rugeley for more than half a century could be gone in less than a decade under new Government plans, resulting in the loss of more than 150 jobs.
All polluting coal-fired power stations will be closed by 2025, the Government has announced, in a move which makes the UK the first major country to end use of the fossil fuel.
But it would mean the loss of up to 170 jobs at Rugeley, which has been home to a coal-fired power station since 1960.
The original Rugeley A station closed in 1996 but Rugeley B – completed in 1970 – has continued, generating 1,000 megawatts, enough electricity for around 1 million people.
The station uses three million tons of coal a year, putting it in the firing line for the Government's drive to phase out coal and switch to gas.
The announcement will be a bitter blow for the workforce at the 372-acre site. Two years ago the power station's owner, £50bn-a year French energy group GDF Suez , scrapped plans to convert Rugeley to a biomass energy generator.
That scheme would have given the station – Rugeley's biggest employer after the vast Amazon warehouse next door – a long term future.
That future now seems limited to 10 years, or less.
A power station spokesman said: "The statement from the UK Government today regarding coal-fired power stations is not unexpected. We continue to review the position of Rugeley Power Station in light of all new market developments."
Councillor Mick Grocott, chairman of Rugeley town council, said: "This decision is clearly a blow to the town. All we can hope is that they find another use for the power station.
"Possibly they could revisit the idea of using biomass, or convert it to a gas power station.
"But at the moment it is not good news. We have worried about the future of the power station since they closed Lea Hall Colliery in 1991 but it has kept going.
"After suffering over the last 20 or 30 years things have seemed to be on the up for Rugeley, with Amazon and Tesco coming in, but this is a backward step."
Environmentalists have backed the historic move to phase out coal, the power source responsible for most carbon emissions.
Tightening environmental regulations have seen a string of major coal-fired power plants closed in recent years. Of the dozen that remain three are due to shut by March next year.
Under the plans, all coal power plants which do not have technology to capture their carbon emissions will be shut by 2025, with their use restricted by 2023, a move which meets a previous pledge by Prime Minister David Cameron to phase out coal.
Rugeley B doesn't have carbon capture technology. Instead it uses a flue gas desulpherisation, or FGD, plant to remove sulphur dioxide.
The Government is insisting it will be "imperative" to build new gas-fired power stations in the next 10 years as it turns the emphasis on to new gas and nuclear power plants to cut emissions and ensure energy security.
Energy Secretary Amber Rudd said: "We are tackling a legacy of under-investment and ageing power stations which we need to replace with alternatives that are reliable, good value for money, and help to reduce our emissions.
"It cannot be satisfactory for an advanced economy like the UK to be relying on polluting, carbon-intensive 50-year-old coal-fired power stations.
"Let me be clear: this is not the future.
"Our determination to cut carbon emissions as cost effectively as possible is crystal clear and this step will make us one of the first developed countries to commit to taking coal off our system."
