Largest wood burning power station is licensed by the Environment Agency (Wales)

PT-RAPS is totally disgusted with the Environment Agency Wales for awarding an operating licence (on 30th Sept 09) for the world’s largest wood burning power station in Port Talbot. For the past ten years Port Talbot has consistently failed to meet EC air quality limits for Particulate matter under 10 microns called Pm10.

The main reasons why we feel a licence should have been refused:

The UK Government has recently applied to the EU commission for a time extension for Port Talbot to achieve air quality objectives for PM10. The UK Government argued in the consultation that it was doing all it could to improve air quality. However it is fairly obvious to everyone that air quality objectives are not being achieved in Port talbot due to the amount of heavy industry in the town at the moment. The addition of more heavy industry (by the UK Govt) is hardly likely to help the situation, indeed it is irresponsible and questions the validity of declarations made by the Govement in the consultation to the EU.

The Welsh Assembly is still investigating the cause of 46 air quality exceedences of PM10 in 2007, which was significantly more than the 35 allowed.

On the Green energy debate PT-RAPS believes that large scale biomass power generation is neither Green nor environmentally friendly. Increasingly the experts are agreeing with our view on this. The UK requirement for 25 Million tonnes of woodchip from abroad is just not sustainable.

Times: November 16, 2009

Britain cuts down forests to keep ‘green’ power stations burning

From Sunday Times: May 17th 2009

Government's biomass cash bonanza brings in waste from around the world

Times: November 18, 2009

Scottish & Southern Energy in power play for wood

The EAW said they were satisfied that Prenergy had the necessary experience for them to have confidence to award the operating permit. This was despite the fact that Prenergy is a shell company and their annual accounts show there is only one employee on the pay role.

With regard to the licence the EAW has set stringent emission limits but:

i) Filtering limits for PM10 emissions from the stack are set three times more stringent than can normally be achieved with best available practice (BAT).

ii) Limits for a carcinogenic emission called Benzo[a]Pyrene were set 60 times more stringent than the developer Prenergy said it could achieve.

This being the case, why then has an operating licence been issued at all by the EAW?

Computer dispersion modelling has been used to predict the strength of the emissions received at ground level from the Prenergy power station. Some of these were borderline in terms of safety due to the high pollution levels present in Port Talbot already

A serious breach of trust by the EAW

The Environment Agency deliberately withheld concerns made by the Public Health board and PT-RAPS from the consultation process.

Concerns were raised about the over-optimistic accuracy being assumed for the dispersion model software. The EAW's failure to allow for the poorer precision of the software when used in this location has ensured that the booked emissions from the power station were significantly reduced.

Local Health Board letter to the EAW

In this instance the EAW dismissed the performance of the official validations for the software from CERC arguing that a study they had found was more relevant.

This study used an out of date version of the software and measured the radioactive fallout of Krypton- 85 from a Sellafield reprocessing facility.

PT-RAPS to Local Health Board

The false comparison of the results of this study and the way the Local Health board and PT-RAPS were misrepresented has resulted in an official complaint to the Secretary of State for DECC.

PT-RAPS Letter to the Secretary of State

Letter Appendix information

email:info@pt-raps.co.uk