Underground Coal Gasification in the Dee Estuary

Readers may have heard of the possibility of coal gasification of the beds under the Dee Estuary, which has the potential to be very damaging to the wildlife of the Dee. We will obviously oppose any planning application, on grounds of damage to wildlife, and on the general grounds that, to avoid climate change catastrophic to people and wildlife, we need to leave a substantial proportion of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, and risky ones like this should be the first to be left alone.

Wirral Wildlife belong to The Dee Estuary Conservation Group, which is an umbrella body for a number of environmental organisation concerned with the Dee Estuary. The DECG is investigating this as a group and will undoubtedly oppose any planning application that is made. Richard Smith runs the Dee Estuary Birding website www.deeestuary.co.uk and is just about to retire as long-standing secretary of DECG. He has written a short article about coal gasification in the March newsletter on the Dee Estuary website. It explains the national and (vitally) international protection that is now enjoyed by the Dee Estuary, which means that proposals for gasification would have to go through many hoops, including European and international (Ramsar) bodies.

So it could not happen easily of quickly or without a lot of publicity. Should it get to a planning application, we would of course we looking for as many people as possible to object.

Meanwhile, please do your bit to counter the perceived "need" for this by the things we all need to do: reducing our own energy consumption, insulating houses, upgrading heating systems, moving energy supplier to one which supplies as much renewable energy as possible, and lobbying our politicians to make them realise that climate change is happening, is in large part due to human activity, and that we all need to tackle it. That must include renewable electricity generation as well as energy conservation - but we do examine all planning applications for harm to existing wildlife. Do contact your MP about this.

For more information on climate change, see www.ipcc.ch (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

How we in Britain can change the way we get and use energy: www.zerocarbonbritain.com

Dr Hilary J Ash

Hon Conservation Officer

Wirral Wildlife