Marsden not to proceed?

Auckland, 11 February, 2007 -- Greenpeace today called on Mighty River Power to clarify what it plans to do with its proposal to re-fire Marsden B on coal, following a news report over the weekend which suggested it may drop the project.

Mighty River's comments in the Sunday Star Times indicate they may not proceed with their coal plans if a price on carbon is implemented, as the Government Climate and Energy Minister, David Parker indicated will occur.

"We call on Mighty River, a State Owned Enterprise, to put an end to their ridiculous coal plans at Marsden. If they don't want to go ahead they should stop wasting tax payers money pushing this proposal through the Environment Court and now the High Court (1), wasting Department of Conservation time on their application and wasting community groups precious resources on a dinosaur climate-polluting project that looks like it is dead in the water anyway," said Vanessa Atkinson, Greenpeace New Zealand Climate Campaigner.

"Leading climate scientists last week issued their most dire warnings yet about the catastrophic impacts from climate change if we don't urgently cut greenhouse pollution. We call on Mighty River to put their energy into finding solutions to the climate crisis, through developing renewable energy sources like wind, biomass and geothermal, and looking at how they can boost energy efficiency," said Atkinson.

Greenpeace won a ground breaking decision in the High Court that climate change could be considered in the Marsden B case, overturning an earlier Environment Court ruling. Mighty River and Genesis Energy are challenging the High Court decision in the Court of Appeal. A hearing is scheduled for August this year.

ENDS

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