THE Fiddlers Ferry power station in Cheshire was last night "named and shamed" by Friends of the Earth as one of the UK's worst climate polluters.

The Widnes complex, which employs 230 people, came fourth in a league table of coal-fired power stations published by the green charity to mark the start of its Carbon Dinosaurs campaign.

A UK-wide project launched today calls on the government to make major cuts in permissible carbon emissions.

The league table ranks the UK's 16 coal-fired stations by calculating the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of electricity produced.

The charity says that the power stations at the top of the table are least efficient.

Fiddlers Ferry's sister plant, Ferry-bridge in Yorksire, fared even worse, being ranked 2nd in the survey.

The Daily Post reported last month how New York-based energy group MMC was considering making an offer for the plants, owned by the AEP group.

Frank Kennedy, Friends of the Earth regional campaigns co-ordinator for the North West, said: "The Fiddlers Ferry power station is of a generation that now needs to be urgently superseded because of what we know about climate change, the need to reduce our carbon emissions, and to meet our commitments under the Kyoko agreement.

"We need either to close or convert the plant to cleaner technology. If it was one of the most up-to-date gas fired stations, its carbon emissions would halve."

The league table is published as the government considers how to implement EU directives on the emission of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.

Friends of the Earth said power stations were still the biggest source of emissions of greenhouse gases in the UK, and the UK was the second highest emitter of greenhouse gases in Europe.

The charity is calling for emissions from the 16 remaining coal-fired power stations, which are more than 30 years old, to be halved by the end of the decade or the target of a 20pc cut in carbon dioxide by 2010 will be impossible to meet.

Friends of the Earth's energy campaigner, Bryony Worthington, said: "These carbon dinosaurs have no place in a modern and clean energy system."

The poll was topped by Cockenzie in East Lothian, owned by ScottishPower, with another Scottish power station, Longannet in Clackmannanshire, taking third place. Nobody from Fiddlers Ferry power station was available for comment yesterday.