And the winner is...

For a third straight year the Polish power plant Belchatow tops the list of Europe’s dirtiest installations in 2009, European Commission data showed.

The lignite-fired Belchatow plant, run by state-owned utility BOT Elektrownia, belched out nearly 30 million tonnes of climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere last year, down 1.4 million tonnes from 2008 but still roughly equivalent to the total emissions of Estonia and Latvia combined.

The thirty biggest CO2 polluters – also known as the “dirty thirty” – collectively emitted 348 million tonnes of CO2 last year, down ten per cent from 2008 and twelve per cent below 2007 levels.
 

    Company Plant Emissions Change, %
2008 2009
1 Poland BOT Elektrownia Belchatow 29.5 30.9 -4.5
2 Germany RWE AG       Niederaussem 26.3 24.9 5.7
3 Germany Vattenfall Jaenschwalde 23.3 23.5 -0.9
4 UK Drax Group Drax 19.9 22.3 -11.0
5 Germany RWE AG Weisweiler 19.0 21.4 -11.2
6 Germany RWE AG Neurath 17.9 18.0 -0.4
7 Germany RWE AG Frimmersdorf 16.8 18.6 -9.6
8 Italy Enel SPA Brindisi Sud 13.0 14.9 -13.0
9  Greece Public Power  Agios Dimitrios 12.9 11.8 9.5
10 Germany Vattenfall Bohlen 12.8 11.4 12.2
11  Poland BOT Elektrownia Turow Bogatynia 11.6 12.9 -9.7
12  Poland BOT Elektrownia Kozienice 10.7 10.0 6.8
13 Germany Vattenfall Schwarze Pumpe 10.7 12.5 -14.4
14  Greece Public Power Kardia 9.6 9.6 0.0
15  France ArcelorMittal Dunkerque 9.2 11.3 -18.6
16 UK EDF Cottam 8.4 10.2 -17.0
17 Germany Vattenfall Boxberg 8.1 9.3 -13.4
18 UK E.ON Ratcliffe on Soar 7.6 9.9 -23.2
19 Poland BOT Elektrownia Opole 7.4 6.9 7.3
20 UK Scottish Power Longannet 7.3 5.9 24.4
21 Poland BOT Elektrownia Rybnik 7.2 8.1 -10.8
22 Germany Vattenfall Boxberg 7.2 6.1 17.2
23 UK EDF West Burton 7.2 9.7 -25.7
24 Estonia Eesti Elektrijaam Narva 7.0 8.3 -15.0
25 Germany GKM (RWE, EnBW & MVV) Mannheim 6.6 7.1 -6.5
26  Germany ThyssenKrupp Duisburg 6.6 8.8 -25.0
27  Hungary RWE AG, MVM, EnBW Visonta 6.2 6.2 -1.1
28 Poland BOT Elektrownia Patnow I, Konin 6.1 7.1 -13.7
29 Germany E.ON Schkopau 6.1 6.3 -4.1
30  Romania Termoelectrica Turceni 6.1 7.4 -18.5
TOTAL 348.1 387.8* -10.2

*2008 TOTAL figure is sum of last year’s top 30.

Released on April 1, the data showed that the total CO2 released by all plants regulated by the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) fell by over eleven per cent last year, primarily as a result of the impact on European industry of the global economic recession.

Coal-fired power plants made up 28 of the top thirty emitters, while the remaining two were steel plants: one in France and the other in Germany.

With twelve out of the top thirty, Germany was again home to most of Europe’s biggest emitters. Second came Poland with six plants, and third the UK with five plants.

The Table shows a list of the EU’s “dirty thirty” with emissions data for 2008 and 2009 in millions of tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

Christer Ågren

Source: Reuters 6 April 2010

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