News / avonmouth
Labour candidate to oppose biomass plant
Labour’s candidate for the Bristol North West seat at the next election has added his opposition to a controversial biomass power plant in Avonmouth.
A week after the Liberal Democrat candidate joined campaigners against the green energy plans, Darren Jones has now added his name to the list of opponents.
Councillors are due to debate the plan put forward by Atkins, together with a Canadian company, Nexterra, on Wednesday.
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Bristol City Council officers last week recommended plans for the 11MW power plant at Chittening Industrial Estate.
The plant would process 60,000 tonnes of waste wood a year to create a natural gas, which would then be burned to generate electricity.
But Jones said that while he did not object to a limited amount of biomass energy production, he was opposed to “the prospect of Avonmouth becoming an outpost of our city where we just burn waste materials”.
Today is the final day of a special trial monitoring of air pollution in the area, following a concerted public campaign over the summer about high levels of dust in the atmosphere affecting residential communities.
Jones added it would “seem sensible” to reject plans for a new plant that could potentially worsen air quality, despite council officer Angelo Calabrese saying the plant would not affect have “significant impacts” on air quality in the area.
“I am not satisfied that burning waste wood is either a sustainable renewable source of energy nor a source that ultimately benefits the environment and, as European Green Capital in 2015, I hope that wider strategic environmental considerations will be taken into account,” Jones said.
In a blog, he added: “Avonmouth has the potential to drive economic growth in Bristol and to create the good quality, well-paid jobs that we need for local people.
“If we are to transform Avonmouth for the benefit of our city we must take a larger view about the area as a whole. Agreeing to a string of individual planning applications without doing so risks unforeseen consequences.”
Last week, Lid Dem Clare Campion-Smith said the plant was “not the answer to our energy problems”.
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