ELECTRICITY AND SMOKE
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,---In the last sixty years there has been a great reduction in London smoke fogs. The improvement is due in a great measure to stricter anti-smoke regulations, but also to the large adoption of gas fires, coke fires, gas engines, oil engines, and electric power motors.
Most of the electric generating stations are on the outskirts of London and on the eastern side. About twenty years ago it was proposed to erect a great generating station at Batter- sea. A Committee of the House of Commons asked me to give adverse evidence, and rejected the proposal on the ground that it would pollute the London atmosphere, and that the capital cost and generating cost would be more than at a generating station near the coalfields, or on the river, ten or twenty miles below London Bridge, and that from either of such stations electric current could be delivered in London at less than the generating cost at Battersea.
The Electrical Commissioners have now sanctioned a scheme for establishing a huge generating station at Battersea, where 800,000 tons of coal will be burnt a year, polluting the atmo- sphere with smoke of various colours, black, brown, and grey, with sulphurous acid, carbonic acid, carbon monoxide, and enormous quantities of dust.
This is a retrograde step of the most abominable kind. I have known London as a frequent visitor for sixty years, and as a resident for the last twenty-one years.
At a generating station on the Thames ten or twenty miles below London Bridge, electric current could be produced at a lower cost and delivered at Battersea without polluting the London atmosphere.—I am, Sir, &c., ARNOLD LUPTON.
7 Victoria Street, London, S.JV .1.
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