We know iconic power stations such as Fawley exist, yet, as with windfarms, we’re revolted by them being near our homes
School day trips, growing up in the 1990s in Southampton, usually entailed being taken to anywhere nearby that was green enough, most often the New Forest. One trip, just on the forest’s edge, was by a long measure the most memorable. Fawley power station is an oil-fired power station perched just at the edge of Southampton Water, next to the equally vast Esso oil refinery. Being taken around and inside it was utterly, overwhelmingly fascinating a trip to somewhere completely alien, terrifying and (obviously) powerful, and at the same time entirely ordinary.
On hearing that attempts to have the administration building listed by English Heritage a year after it was closed as a power station have just failed, and that demolition is almost inevitable, it was hard not to have mixed feelings. It was undoubtedly polluting, and was surely having a deleterious effect on any attempt to bring down carbon emissions. It was a bad thing. But being taken around there, seeing it and having it explained, was genuinely educational, in the best sense. This is where electricity comes from. Isn’t it wonderful?