The Coal Caravan arrived in Pontefract, on foot and bicycle, on Tuesday night after setting off from Nottingham on Friday on a tour of controversial coal areas.

They held a coal debate at Pontefract Town Hall on Tuesday evening before protesting outside Ferrybridge Power Station on Wednesday morning.

From there, they walked and cycled to Fairburn to visit the site of the open cast mine proposal and talk to residents.

Penny Eastwood, a member of the Coal Caravan – a working group of Climate Camp, which recently hit the headlines for its G20 protest in London, said the tour was to see how communities were affected by coal and its impact and to look into how a transition to a low-carbon economy could be achieved.

She said: “A new coal-fired power station is planned for Ferrybridge. The government is trying to go for a huge expansion, building new coal fired power stations. They claim that these would be green because of the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology. They say they are being green but they are actually being dirty.

“We are tying ourselves into 50 years of coal. With the climate as it is, if we don’t start reducing emissions pretty much now, we are going to go beyond tipping point, which leads to climage change speeding up dramatically.

“It’s a bit like an invisible emergency. It’s a bit hard to grasp what’s going on.

“We are at a really critical moment now and the government is making all the wrong decisions, such as Heathrow’s third runway and the expansion of coal fired power stations.

“In Fairburn, there has been very vigorous campaigning against the open cast mine proposal.

“A lot of the deep mines have shut down and now were are getting open casting. In terms of the people’s environment, it dramatically affects the quality of life for the neighbouring communities. But it is also tying us into a coal future.

“An interesting fact about the Fairburn open cast mine proposal is that it would only provide enough coal to keep the three local power stations in the area going for two weeks.

“Coal is actually a hugely valuable resource and should be used for making steel for wind turbines and things like that. We actually have a really good resource with wind and waves – lots of potential free energy. But the big energy corporations really don’t want a decentralised, local energy supply. It’s not in their best interests.”