[15] The plant opted in to the UK Transitional National Plan, placing limits on its sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxides and particulates emissions.

[22][23] Three days before this, Scottish Power had illuminated a slogan onto the chimney that read "Make Coal History".

[11] The front-wall-fired Foster Wheeler boilers could each burn around 250 tonnes of coal an hour at full load.

[11] Each boiler provided around 1,800 tonnes per hour of steam at a pressure of 168 bars (16,800 kPa) and a temperature of 568 °C (1,054 °F) to two 300 MW General Electric Company turbo generators.

[11] Coal was originally supplied directly by conveyor belt from the neighbouring Longannet Colliery, until it closed in 2002 after a flood.

[25][28] Around half of the coal used was Scottish, and the rest had to be imported, the majority via the former British Steel plc ore loading facility at Hunterston Terminal in Ayrshire.

[29] An alternative route, the Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine rail link, at the mouth of the river Forth was reopened in 2008, and was also used to deliver coal.

Losses from this supply were made up by a plant capable of treating 218 cubic metres (7,700 cu ft) of water per hour.

In the late 1980s, the station's units were fitted with sulphur trioxide (SO3) conditioning equipment to lower the fly ash's electrical resistivity.

This meant that the SO3 conditioning equipment did not need to be operated as frequently to maintain the allowed level of particulate emissions.

In 2003, Longannet was named as Scotland's biggest polluter in a report by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA).

Longannet used to burn up to 65,000 tonnes of treated and dried sewage sludge per year, which has a similar calorific value to low-quality brown coal.

In 2005, a judge ruled the burning of sludge as illegal, but the SEPA continued to allow Scottish Power to burn the sludge illegally as part of an agreement which originally required Scottish Power to construct, and have in operation, a biomass plant in 2010.

[34] All burning of biomass at Longannet – including waste-derived fuel and sawdust pellets – ceased in April 2012.

[36] According to a Greenpeace-commissioned report by Stuttgart University on the health impacts of the biggest coal-burning power plants in Europe, Longannet was responsible for 4,210 lost 'life years' in 2010.