Responding to the news that the National Grid has asked a coal fired power station to fire up to meet demands of air conditioning, Ami McCarthy, Greenpeace UK’s Political Campaigner, said:
“It is a sign of failure that the National Grid is turning to one of the most polluting forms of power generation to deal with a summer heatwave that we know has been made worse because of climate change.
“Why has the Government left us caught in this doom loop spiral of using coal to tackle the impacts of a warming planet, when we have far better, greener, and cheaper solutions? If our homes were properly insulated, they’d keep us cool in the summer as well as warm in the winter, plus some heat pumps can cool as well as heat homes.
“The Government must get to work and upgrade our energy grid. In summer, we should be turning to solar power, yet we currently have renewable energy going to waste because our grid cannot transmit the power, and hundreds of renewables projects which are on hold because they can’t get connected.”
