RWE Being Screwed?

Auntie BEEB dutifully regurgitated a little piece of corporate propaganda onto my carpet this evening.

It seems power generation company RWE Npower have decided after all to build a huge gas fired power station at Milford Haven.


The company have made clear on numerous occasions that the primary reason for selecting Milford as the site for this station is LNG.

RWE claim that this station will produce enough power "for three million homes", which is curious, as Wales itself only has around a million homes. So where's all this power going?

The answer is very generously provided by RWE's Chief Honcho, Andrew Duff; "the two developments (Pembroke and Staythorpe) will replace existing coal power stations at Didcot and Tilbury in England."

The fact of the matter is that Wales itself is already a net exporter of electricity. We produce around 33 Terrawatt hours of electricity every year, of which we only consume around 19 Terrawatt hours. The rest is exported over the border.

And while the company has not yet secured consent from the Department of Enterprise Business and Regulatory Reform for construction of this plant, you can rest assured it's already a done deal. A number of sources in the Milford Haven area inform me that construction has already begun on a connecting pipeline from the LNG terminal at Dragon to the proposed power station site at Pennar, on the other side of the Haven.

It's all part of a grand plan, you see, spoon-fed to the welsh public in small doses to make it easier to swallow.