GENEVA, Oct 04, 2005 -- AFX News - UK

 

Coal-fired power stations in Greece, Germany and Spain top a new table of Europe's dirtiest electricity plants, the environmental group WWF International said.

In its new "Dirty Thirty" ranking of power station pollution in the European Union, WWF said Greece's Agios Dimitrios plant was the worst, followed closely by RWE AG's Frimmersdorf in Germany and Abono in Spain, owned by Hidroelectrica de Cantabrico, a unit of Energias de Portugal.

It ranked plants across the 25-nation EU according to their efficiency -- a calculation based on the number of grammes of carbon dioxide emitted per kilowatt hour of electricity generated.

Other Greek, German and Spanish power stations, as well as one at Turow in Poland, filled out the top 10.

Germany is home to five of the 10 dirtiest plants, the WWF study showed.

The ranking showed that only half a dozen companies account for 19 of the 30 dirtiest power stations -- besides RWE, they include Vattenfall (Sweden), Enel (Italy), Endesa (Spain), E.ON (Germany) and EDF (France).

Not all the plants are in the company's home country.

Over the next two decades, many of the "Dirty Thirty" are set to be decommissioned, noted the WWF, calling this a "historic window of opportunity to cut CO2 pollution."

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