Greenpeace protests over Poland's carbon output

Greenpeace activists climbed one of Europe's biggest power plants on Tuesday to demand that Poland's government do more to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Eleven people reached the top of the Belchatow power plant in central Poland -- home to some of the biggest carbon-emitting installations in Europe -- from where they slid down on ropes to paint "Stop CO2" on a smoke stack.

The Belchatow plant is Poland's biggest energy producer, using brown coal from Europe's largest open-cast mine.

The plant's spokesman, Jacek Michel, said its activities were not affected.

The Polish government is reviewing its energy policy to meet European Union requirements. But it has launched a legal challenge to the European Commission for setting carbon emissions limits that it says will hurt the country's economy.

Greenpeace said it wants the government to make renewable energy sources and energy savings a priority and stop producing 90 percent of its energy from coal, which emits large amounts of the greenhouse gas widely blamed for global warming.

"Our government is completely ignoring climate change, they don't do anything, pretend that this topic doesn't exist and insist on using the oldest and most polluting energy sources," Greenpeace spokeswoman Ewa Jakubowska said.

Belchatow spokesman Michel said Greenpeace was wrong to target the plant because it was producing only two-thirds of the carbon emissions to which it was entitled under EU rules.

Conservation group WWF published a report in May listing the top "Dirty Thirty" power stations in Europe and found Belchatow was the most polluting in absolute emission terms, pumping out 30.1 million tonnes of CO2 in 2006.

The report found that most of the 30, which together account for 10 percent of the bloc's CO2 emissions, were in Germany and Britain, which each had 10 of the least environmentally efficient carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions..

The two dirtiest power stations in the EU in relative terms -- grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour -- were in Greece, it said.

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