CLEANING up pollution from British power stations will either flood
the building market with plasterboard or pose a gypsum waste problem, MPs
were told last week.
The two biggest electricity generating companies in Britain plan to
fit 8 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity with flue-gas desulphurisation equipment
by the turn of the century, to meet European curbs on air pollution. The
technique employs large amounts of limestone and produces gypsum as a by-product.
The companies plan to turn it into plasterboard.
Once the equipment is fitted, the power industry will generate 2000
tonnes of gypsum a year – enough, as the House of Commons Energy Select
Committee heard, to meet two-thirds of the present market for plasterboard.
