Electricity is not clean

The industry has dubbed its product as “clean power” as electricity does not choke whole neighbourhoods with sulphurous fumes and the streets and cities like London are not blackened by soot or omnipresent smoke clouds.  However, in the modern era of electric homes there is probably a power station pouring out smoke into the atmosphere.  This will be expected to happen day and night, all year round, in order to produce electricity for factories, offices and millions of fuel-hungry households as well as your own.

            Power station towers are up to 300 metres high as contemporary engineering assumed that they would disperse the fumes over a larger area, far above towns and cities. Although the fumes are dispersed they are by no means harmless.  These power stations are now spreading environmental havoc on a grand scale.

            Electricity generation from the combustion of fossil fuels contributes substantially to unhealthy air quality, acid rain  and global climate change.  A sharp, acrid gas pours out of all fossil fuel power stations and around 100 million tones of these emissions are released annually making sulphur dioxide the greatest of all man-made environmental hazards apart from radioactive  waste.

            Fumes are dispersed by these towers across land and sea transforming in close proximity as “dry deposition” but dissolves during its ominous journey in water vapour to produce sulphuric acid or more commonly known as acid rain.

            Political will, keen entrepreneurship and feasible technology will allow consumers to resort to alternatives.  Or prefer to remain subjected to more traditional ways of power production, no matter how dangerous, dirty or short-term these are.