Coal plants are Stonehenge of the carbon era, says NGO – 03/12/2024 – Environment

In the midst of Europe’s energy transition, the British NGO Twentieth Century Society (TCS) is trying to preserve some gigantic power plant buildings as testaments to a carbon-powered era.

Closed last year, the West Burton A coal plant near Sheffield, England, has eight 90-meter-high cooling towers, the equivalent of a 30-story building. Demolition has been scheduled for 2028.

“These modernist megaliths are the Stonehenge of the carbon age. Cooling towers have a presence unlike anything else on the British landscape,” says Oli Marshall, campaigns director at TCS.

He quotes English artist Anthony Gormley, who poetically described such towers as a “man-made volcano…a reliquary of the carbon age, a memorial to Britain’s great 200-year romance with the second law of thermodynamics.”

According to Marshall, “we should all welcome the transition to greener, cleaner energy production in the UK — and the potential investment, jobs and development to [o condado de] Nottinghamshire that this can bring.”

“However, the preservation of our industrial heritage and the arrival of new energy technologies should not be an ‘either/or’ situation. There is room for both to coexist”, he adds.

The plant, which burned coal for electricity, dominated the north Nottinghamshire landscape for more than 60 years.

“The West Burton site is absolutely vast, around 410 acres, which is equivalent to the size of 205 football pitches. The eight cooling towers take up less than 3% of that. When viewed as a group, and given the technical complexity of controlled demolition for just a few, we will always advocate for the preservation of all towers in West Burton,” says Marshall.

In 1968, the complex won an architectural award which described it as “an immense work of engineering of great style, which, far from devaluing the visual scene, acts as a magnet to the eye from many parts of the Trent Valley and several miles away.” “It’s an exceptional contribution to the local scene,” said the jury.

For TCS, although it is difficult to view cooling towers as artifacts or relics while some are still in operation, just like factory chimneys, cooling towers will soon pass into history.

“As the carbon era ends and the sustainable era begins, it is important that we retain part of our past, to remember where we came from and point the way to our future,” said the director.

“Internationally, there are already multiple examples of these enormous, challenging structures being repurposed in imaginative ways — from amusement parks to extreme sports centers, music festival venues to art installations,” he says, citing the Land of Wonders amusement park from Kalkar, Germany.

Kalkar operates in a former nuclear power plant complex near Düsseldorf and has installed a toy on top of a cooling tower similar to those in West Burton. Opened in 2016, the park receives 600,000 visitors a year.

The Twentieth Century Society is a charity that campaigns to protect Britain’s modern architectural and design heritage from 1914 to the present day. “Over the past 40 years, we have saved countless iconic buildings for the nation,” says Marshall.

“From iconic red telephone boxes to modernist housing estates and brutalist bus stations, from postmodern office blocks to pop art murals. As an organization, we are style-neutral. If a building or public work has merit, we will fight to preserve it. it”, he concludes.