ScottishPower to close Longannet
19 Aug 2015
ScottishPower has announced plans to close its coal-fired Longannet Power Station in March next year.
Based in Fife, the power station has four 600MW generating units, making it one of the largest in Europe.
It blamed the combination of high carbon taxes and high transmission charging, which had made running a thermal plant in Scotland “uneconomic”.
This is a sad day for ScottishPower, and for our highly-skilled and committed team at Longannet
Neil Clitheroe, retail and generation chief, ScottishPower
ScottishPower recently indicated that Longannet was likely to close after it failed to secure a contract from National Grid for grid balancing services.
“This is a sad day for ScottishPower, and for our highly-skilled and committed team at Longannet,” said Neil Clitheroe, chief executive of retail and generation at ScottishPower.
“We have explored every potential option to keep the station open, and we still maintain that Longannet could continue generation in to the next decade under the right economic conditions.”
The station has been in operation for 46 years, and currently employs 236 people.
A number of opportunities will be available for redeployment to other areas of the ScottishPower business, and early retirement and redundancy packages will also be available, the company said.
