The pressing need to develop technology to capture and store CO2 emissions has been brought to a head by the controversy surrounding the planned coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, in Kent. Now a study from the TUC’s Clean Coal Task Group argued that if such new plants are built ‘capture-ready’ and carbon capture and storage (CCS) was ‘demonstrated [that is, piloted] in parallel’, Britain will set the right example to countries which will, realistically, continue to use much larger quantities of coal for the next century and longer – such as India and China.
The Clean Coal Task Group – which includes unions and employers from across the coal and power industries – says that ministers’ delays to backing the emerging technologies behind clean coal and carbon capture and storage are causing uncertainty and delaying vital investment, increasing risks to the UK’s security of electricity supplies. Policy Exchange researchers at Edinburgh University have reached a similar conclusion: fitting carbon capture and storage technology could slash global power emissions by 28% by 2050. But, says the new study, ‘policy incoherence is holding back its large-scale deployment in the UK.
The Secretary of State, John Hutton, acknowledged these issues in a speech to the Adam Smith Institute on 10 March 2008. He argued: ‘For critics, there’s a belief that coal-fired power stations undermine the UK’s leadership position on climate change. In fact the opposite is true. Developing economies need to be able to see by the actions that we are taking that it is possible to use indigenous energy reserves and decarbonise our economy … Our leadership role is best promoted by the actions we take on capping emissions, carbon pricing and supporting the development of new CCS technology.’
The TUC estimates that around 11GW of coal and oil power plants are due to close by 2016. A typical power station with two main generators would produce around 1.2GW of electricity a year, so at least 8 new power units are required in the near future. The UK’s international obligations on emissions reductions are clearly a major consideration here. Environmentalists see the use of coal as a barrier towards progress on climate change, but the TUC report insists that a new clean generation of coal-fired power stations could significantly reduce the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions.
New coal stations like Kingsnorth are 20 per cent cleaner than existing coal-fired plants (and will be 80-90 per cent cleaner once CCS is added). If CCS is added to all the coal- and gas-fired power plants likely to be built in the UK by 2016, the report says that the UK’s carbon emissions from power plants could be cut by 42 per cent by 2025.
The government must now throw its weight behind the technology if the UK is to maintain coal-fired power generation amongst all the other sources of power generation, including renewables and nuclear. Ministers need to show how they intend to boost research and development into carbon capture and storage, build capture-ready power plants, and establish a CO2 pipeline infrastructure – all of which would be good for the environment, security of supplies, the economy and employment in the UK.