Green protestors storm British power station

LONDON, Nov 3 (Reuters) Environmental campaigners invaded one of Britain's biggest power stations, forcing the plant to reduce output on one of the coldest days so far this winter, campaigners and the plant's owner said.

Thirty Greenpeace campaigners yesterday broke into the site of the Didcot A station in Oxfordshire, chaining themselves to a coal tower and scaling a chimney stack in a protest about greenhouse gas emissions from the 30 year old plant.

''This one power station emits over six millions tonnes of CO2 (carbon dioxide) a year, that's more than the 29 lowest polluting countries put together,'' Greenpeace campaigner Blake Lee-Harwood said.

The action appeared to be designed to coincide with a visit to the area by Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, a spokeswoman for the station's owner RWE Npower said.

A Greenpeace spokeswoman said protestors planned to continue their action into the night.

RWE Npower said the Didcot plant was still running but at reduced rates, and the company had made up for the shortfall by producing power at other stations.

Yesterday's protest comes after Britain on Monday called for urgent action on climate change following publication of a reporting outlining the economic and environmental fallout from further global warming.

In August, about 600 green protestors staged a demonstration at Britain's biggest power plant, the Drax station in northern England, which is the UK's biggest single industrial emitter of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

RWE Npower said it is at the forefront of developing clean energy production.

''We're the leading operator and generator of wind power in the UK with sixteen on-and offshore wind farms, as well as many hydro power stations and a fleet of highly efficient combined heat and power plant,'' Kevin Akhurst, Managing Director of Generation and Renewables at RWE npower, said.

The 2000-megawatt coal-fired Didcot A station was commissioned in 1972 and is one of the UK's oldest stations. It is one of several plants due to close over the next five to 10 years.

Reuters SHB DB0925