Last week a Scottish Power executive called for coal to be excluded from the UK’s capacity market scheme (Report, 31 January). Five days later UK coal plants were awarded taxpayer-funded subsidies worth up to £72.8m. With the government’s consultation on phasing out coal-fired power generation by 2025 closing on Wednesday, for coal plant operators it must be like being asked to leave the party while being bought a drink.

Likewise, while CO 2 emissions are subject to a carbon price floor, its current level is too low to be effective. Meanwhile, the so-called Transitional National Plan grants UK plants permission to pollute above EU limits. TNP’s “pollution bubbles” are filled with toxic fumes that cause 2,800 premature deaths in the UK every year.

Four simple steps would remove the contradictions in the current policy: coal should be excluded from the capacity market; the carbon floor price should be raised in line with the environmental damage caused by the fuel being burned; additional pollution produced by Aberthaw power station as a result of illegal permitting should be removed from the toxic-bubble scheme; finally, all coal-fired power stations must close before the TNP ends in mid-2020.

Current contradictory policy is holding coal on life support. As we watch coal slowly die businesses lose confidence, opportunities for green investment are missed, workers are left in the dark and the environment and human health suffer. In short, everyone loses.

Christian Schaible

Policy manager, industrial production, European Environmental Bureau

• In your article (Concerns over who pays as Shell begins huge take of decommissioning Brent oil rigs, 6 February), a Shell spokesman refers to “quite violent action against Shell assets”. Actually the Brent Spar campaign was entirely peaceful. And, far from accepting Shell could dump its oil tank at sea, we made them remove it. That victory led to the international regulations that now prevent oil firms from treating our marine environment as a dumping ground for discarded drilling rigs. These are the very rules Shell seems to be trying to sidestep, not as a favour to the UK taxpayer but for the sake of its bottom line. Shell and other oil firms have made billions out of their platforms while pocketing millions in government subsidies and driving climate change in the process. The very least they can do is take responsibility for their old oil rigs instead of lobbying the government to bend hard-won international protection for the sake of their balance sheets.

John Sauven

Executive director, Greenpeace UK

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