In an article on Tuesday 11 March ( http://tinyurl.com/2cob6o), the Post reported, "High Marnham Power Station, near Retford, could be set to reopen after the Government announced yesterday that more fossil fuels must be burned."

High Marnham had been the oldest power station in the county and employed more than 100 people, but it closed in 2003. The Post's suggestion that it is to be "reopened" seem unlikely given that most of the facility was subsequently demolished, with only a few cooling towers remaining. Instead it seems safe to assume that any proposals are focused on reusing the site.

The possibility arises following a speech given by John Hutton MP (the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform) at the neo-liberal Adam Smith Institute on Monday ( http://tinyurl.com/2z6txo).

Hutton claimed that new coal fired power stations would not undermine "the UK’s leadership position on climate change" and asserted that "we are taking a global lead on clean coal power generation."

The role of High Marnham in all this is unclear, but the Post claims that "energy company E.on is considering building a power station" and quotes a spokesman who states simply, "We are considering our options but certainly no decisions have been made yet."

It is unlikely that if plans are moved ahead for a new power plant they will be implemented without challenge. Plans to build the first new coal fired power station in the UK in over thirty years in Kingsnorth, Kent have generated massive opposition and been the target of a number of actions by Greenpeace and others ( http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/tags/kingsnorth).

Nottinghamshire already has an active movement, mobilising against the threat of climate change. A week of events around Easter last year culminated in 11 activists walking into the power plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar just outside Nottingham and locking on in an attempt to shut it down ( http://www.eastsideclimateaction.org.uk/).

In February a meeting was held at the Sumac Centre, specifically addressing the social and environmental impacts of coal, with a focus on indigenous resistance to its extraction ( http://tinyurl.com/2qppej).

While reaction amongst the local activist community has so far been muted, perhaps reflecting a limited awareness, Nigel Lee, of Nottingham Friends of the Earth, told the Post: "We are quite happy for them to experiment in producing the technology needed for clean coal but we're a long way away from it and they should not give the go ahead for clean coal power stations."