A GREEK energy company wants to build a gas-fired power plant on the edge of Carlisle.

GF Energy, which has its headquarters in Athens, has tabled plans to construct the unmanned station at the former ESK Brickworks site in Brisco.

The company has submitted a planning application to Carlisle City Council, which states that, if approved, it would create four full-time jobs as well as others for maintenance contractors.

The application says: "The generation compound is largely unmanned and will be operated remotely from the operators’ national headquarters in the Midlands.

"The lighting system is operational only when an engineer is on site at night or when a security alarm has been triggered.

"Security enables the security company to have visual contact with the site at night. It can be activated remotely or manually on site."

The site is described as a "secure compound" with high-voltage generating equipment housed in containers.

Security would be tight at the site, which would be surrounded by fences and security walls and would be monitored at all times by a CCTV system.

"When operational the site will contain high-voltage equipment – transformers, capacitors, switchgear etc., which could result in serious injury or death if handled incorrectly," the application adds.

"If there were to be an intruder or fire alert, the appointed security monitoring company would inform the emergency services, contact the operator’s engineers and monitor the situation.

"The emergency services’ health-and-safety policies, however, do not allow them to enter high-voltage compounds or substations unless there is a competent electrical engineer present to confirm that the site is not live.

"The emergency services would deal with any emergency from outside the compound with the aid of the CCTV cameras. This protocol mirrors that used by Electricity North West at all of its many substations in the area and is approved by the HSE."

The plant would run for 2,000 hours each year and all of the electricity it generates would be fed into the National Grid. It would have a capacity of 20MW and operate on natural gas fed from the local gas network.

GF Energy's application says that this type of plant is being developed as an alternative to "smoke stack" power stations, which are being phased out.

Blackouts have been predicted as this process takes place.

"If the blackouts that energy regulator Ofgem predicts do occur then local businesses will be able to make use of the power [from Brisco] to keep going when others must close down," the application says.

"This is because the plant is an embedded power station on the local network."

The application follows that for an energy from waste plant at Kingmoor Park, Carlisle.