Biofuel company Edgley Green Power (EGP) has submitted plans for a 32 MW biofuel power station in Shoreham-by-Sea.
The power station will burn up to 50,000 tonnes of biofuels a year. That’s 13,950,000 gallons of fuel. To help you visualise this, imagine the exhaust fumes from 5000 transit vans each driving 94,860 miles up and down the harbour road for a year (each burning 2790 gallons of fuel).
The feedstocks (fuel oils) they list on their application are not available in any great quantities (used cooking oil which is in high demand for biodiesel for cars – and tall oil, a byproduct from pulp and paper production in heavy demand from the chemical industry), or they are ones used by industries that would otherwise import palm oil instead (tallow).
Palm oil is listed as one of the feedstocks which EGP are looking to burn, as the cheapest vegetable oil, it may well turn out to be the main one. If they burn 50,00 tonnes of palm oil, then 12,000 hectares of new plantations would be needed. Other types of vegetable oil (like oil seed rape) would require even more land. It will thus, whether directly or indirectly, lead to more people being evicted from their land to make way for plantations, more forests being cut down and more climate change.
There are only a few weeks to try and stop this application from being approved. Biofuelwatch have put together a web alert to help people object to the application and which you might be able to help circulate.
an application like this is unlikely to be stopped without sufficient local objections and concern. People are needed to help build the local campaign, you can find their facebook page here.
Please object to the planning application by sending the letter at the bottom of the web alert by 11th August. If you have more time, please try to personalise your message.
Objections can be sent directly to planning@adur-worthing.gov.uk. The planning documents can be found here.
