Next Generation Energy

Over in the United Kingdom, the Government's business and technology department (BERR) has a new enthusiasm for new coal-burning power stations which is based on the notion of retrofitting CCS (carbon capture and storage) in the future once the technology is developed. But all the independent advice is going against this policy.

Another thumbs down

Three new reports cast doubt on this. The first is a response to the Government's consultations on the topic published yesterday by the Environment Agency.

It says "The concept of carbon capture readiness (CCR) is insufficient for the climate change challenge that we face." This is categorial and agrees with most other independent studies.

A second report is an in-depth integrated assessment of CCS that analyses the overall effects of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in electricity and hydrogen generation and compares them to renewable energies. It casts many great doubts upon the possibility of CCS ever being viable.

It looks at the life-cycle assessment of CCS power plants for the first time. The study was jointly conducted by the Wuppertal Institute, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Zentrum fur Sonnenenergie- und Wasserstoff-Forschung Baden-Wrttemberg (ZSW) and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Even more damning is one last July from the UK Government itself, saying that it is not feasible.

"Even the most optimistic proponent of CCS would not envisage any demonstration plant to be operational much before 2015, which would put wide-scale deployment as far away as 2020 or later after lessons from the pilot have been learned and digested," says a submission from The Royal Academy of Engineering to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC). This is a cross-party committee headed by a Conservative.

It estimates that the cost of building the first CCS plant could be anything up to £500m, on top of the £1bn cost of a new coal-fired power station. Retrofitting CCS at a station like the new one being planned at Kingsnorth in Kent, scene of recent protests, is likely to cost over £1.1bn. This is a huge figure by any standard, and would have a massive impact on energy prices.

The EAC urges: "We cannot emphasise strongly enough that the possibility of CCS should not be used as a fig leaf to give unabated coal-fired power stations an appearance of environmental acceptability." Furthermore, "Replacing old coal-fired power stations with new ones, rather than using alternative energy sources, locks Britain in to a high level of emissions for many years to come."

The Business Minster, Hutton, has said that a high carbon price under the EU-ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) will mean that CCS-retrofitting so-called 'CCS-ready' new power stations becomes economical. The EAC slams this notion on three counts:

1. Lack of knowledge of the technology: since the eventual nature of CCS technology is currently unknown, how can a plant built now be designed to have the technology retro-fitted on?

2. Carbon emissions: "The EU ETS is a mechanism designed to reduce emissions; using it as a cover for choosing high emissions technology goes against the purpose of the scheme."

3. The price per tonne of CO2 for retrofitting CCS required to make it commercially viable is unfeasibly high: estimates of this vary from the rather optimistic €40 (E.ON UK) to Euros 90-155 per tonne (Climate Change Capital) and €70-100 per tonne (UK Energy Research Centre). How much it will really be is anybody's guess, but the Government cites an EU estimate of a forward price of carbon of €39 for 2013-2020 (EU-ETS Phase 3). The UK Energy Research Centre predicts around €30. The EAC concludes from this: "the gap between the carbon price and the cost of CCS is enormous".

The EAC concludes: "Coal should be seen as the last resort, even with the promise of CCS."

The UK still has faith

But here in the UK coal is not being seen as a last resort. Governments are concerned that the lights shouldn't go out, and for them the easiest option is to accede to pressure from high-powered lobbyists from the existing large energy companies.

These companies already have access to the very centre of government, and in fact there is evidence that they have had a hand in writing the very contracts which government gives them for new coal burning power stations in order to reduce the level of commitments to installing carbon capture and storage capability. (See this item by George Monbiot.)

This is in direct contradiction to the Environment Agency's advice. But the government is more interested in repaying the attentions of powerful lobbyists than our long-term future.

Coal is the new battleground

In fact in the UK, 24 years after the miners strike, coal is at the centre of a new battle. On August 9 activists attempted to close down Kingsnorth powerstation, protesting against government plans to build a new coal-fired power station at the site in Kent. This is just one of many anti-coal protests around the country, as public feeling against coalmining and coal burning is mounting. Simultaneously, the industry has plans to open many new mines, and the government is deciding whether to give the go ahead to seven new coal-fired power stations, the first for 30 years.

Yet concerned climate scientists argue that leaving coal in the ground is the best form of carbon capture and storage - the planet just cannot survive that much more CO2 put into the atmosphere. The burning of coal, the logic goes, is far easier to halt and to replace as a source of electricity and heating, than is oil used for transportation.

Coal is primarily used for electricity generation, which is the largest source of UK greenhouse gas emissions. Of all power stations, coal-fired ones are most CO2 intensive.

Today, globally, burning coal is responsible for around one quarter of our global CO2 emissions. But around half of all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now due to human activity is from burning coal. The majority of this came from Western developed nations who industrialised before China and other emerging indistrialised powers.

This is why developing economies like China and India argue, in the current round of climate control talks, that as today's climate change is due to our historical emissions, developed countries should curb their emissions before they do. Climate campaigners argue that if we want these countries to stop building new coal-fired power stations (China is opening two a week), we must set a good example.

After all, in the UK the coal industry estimates there are 45 billion tonnes of recoverable UK coal reserves, which at current rates would last us 300 years. This represents around 150 billion tonnes of CO2. There is no way that the planet can survive as we know it with this level of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. There are 17 opencast mines in the UK now, with at least a staggering 25 in planning or proposed.

James Hansen

James Hansen is described by many as the world's leading climate scientist. He first alerted Washington politicians to the dangers of climate change in June 1988 and has been an outspoken advocate of action to stop it ever since. He is the director of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies at NASA and adjunct professor at earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. He has called for a moratorium on building coal-fired power plants and for a 350ppm target for the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. (Currently it is 385ppm.)

Please note, that this is 350ppm, not 450ppm which has previously been the level adopted by the international climate community and quoted elsewhere on this website.

"It's very difficult to see how we can prevent the oil from being used and the carbon getting in to the atmosphere because it comes from vehicles, but in the case of coal if we're going to use that, we could restrict it to power-plants and we should say it can only be used there if you capture the CO2," he says. He argues that it's easier to make electricity and heat buildings with other sources of energy than coal, than it is to find alternatives to the fossil fuels which power our vehicles. Therefore we should do this first. "I think it's a better way than saying let's reduce CO2 80% or 90% or 60% or any particular number because we really can't let 40% or 20% of the coal to continue to be used; that's the one source that we really need to cut off."

Hansen has written to Gordon Brown requesting that the Government doesn't build any new coal fired power plants without carbon capture and storage. "Coal is the largest contributor to the human-made increase of CO2 in the air," he wrote. "Saving the planet and creation surely requires phase-out of coal use." See here. We don't know if Brown replied.

In June Hansen told listeners on Capitol Hill, Washington, that the heads of oil and coal companies who knowingly delayed action on curbing greenhouse gas emissions were committing a crime. "These CEO's, these captains of industry," he said in the briefing, "if they don't change their tactics they're guilty of crimes against humanity and nature." He compared cordons of coal cars heading to power plants to the death trains of the Holocaust (because of the mass extinctions foreseen by many biologists should warming go unabated).

Hansen said in an interview in March "I would say within a decade or so, that these coal plants are simply not compatible with keeping a planet resembling the one in which civilisation developed. And I think there is going to be eventually pressure to in effect bulldoze those plants, so economically they just don't make sense. You are not going to be able to leave them there 50 years."

Hanen argues that we will have to "restore the point of energy balance because as it stands now we will lose the Arctic sea ice without any more greenhouse gases, as there is additional warming in the pipeline. That means we would have to reduce the amount of CO2 at least to the 350ppm level, and we are already at 385. So, we've actually got to go backwards and it's really too bad that we didn't realise this earlier."

Does Hansen believe it's possible to reverse the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere? "Yes, yes, it's still possible. If we get on the stick very promptly, it's still practical to do that in ways that are quite natural. The most important thing is to have a moratorium on new coal fired power plants that don't capture CO2 and then to phase out the dirty coal use over the next 2-3 decades.

"If we do that, you know that the system does still take up CO2, the ocean and the soils and things, so that other things being equal, CO2 would only go up to a bit more than 400 if we phase out coal use. But then we have got to take at least 50ppm out of the atmosphere, and that is possible with improved agricultural and forestry practices, things that we have not being paying much attention to."