UK signposts the road to carbon capture

London - Up to four carbon capture demonstration facilities are to be built in the UK under government plans to require all coal-fired power stations in the UK to capture all carbon emissions by around 2025. The plans announced in the House of Commons by Ed Miliband, secretary of state for Energy and Climate Change also require that all new coal-fired power stations, including demonstration plants, capture at least 25% of their carbon emissions on startup.

Alongside the Government's ongoing competition to build a post-combustion demonstrator, up to three further 300-400MW projects including pre-combustion technology, will be funded by a new levy mechanism, Miliband said. The proposals form part of a consultation to be released in the summer, which will soon after guide decsions on applications to build new coal-fired plants - including E.ON's proposed facility at Kingsnorth.

All existing coal-fired plants will be required to have a full-scale CCS retrofit within five years of the technology being independently judged as technically and commercially proven. Miliband envisaged a key role for the Environment Agency in this judgement process adding that the Government will also seek views on whether it is possible to implement these conditions through an emissions performance standard.

"The future of coal in our energy mix poses the starkest dilemma we face: it is a polluting fuel but is used across the world because it is cheap and it is flexible enough to meet fluctuations in demand for power. In order to ensure that we maintain a diverse energy mix, we need new coal-fired power stations but only if they can be part of a low carbon future," said Miliband, who estimated that the CCS proposals would add 2% to UK electricity bills by 2020.

"With a solution to the problem of coal, we greatly increase our chances of stopping dangerous climate change. Without it we will not succeed. CCS is the only technology with the potential to reduce emissions from fossil fuels by up to 90%. But there must be a global effort to develop this technology and the UK is in a strong position to lead this charge, he added.

The new demonstrations will be funded by measures announced by Chancellor Alistair Darling in the Budget, which including a new funding mechanism to support at least two carbon capture and storage demonstration projects, and £90 million to fund detailed preparatory studies for such projects. 

Proposals for how the incentive will work are being developed. These are to be the first step towards establishing CCS clusters in the regions which can achieve the greatest emission reductions most economically, such as Thames, Humberside, Teesside, Firth of Forth and Merseyside.

Miliband cited research showing that carbon abatement technologies could sustain 50,000 jobs by 2030. Coal currently accounts for 37% (29GW) of the UK¹s electricity capacity, generating 31% of the UK' electricity in 2008. That is set to decline to 21GW as stations close in accordance with EU controls on sulphur and nitrogen emissions that cause acid rain.

The Government, said Miliband, will only consider applications if they confirm sufficient space available to retrofit CCS, identify a suitable potential offshore area to store carbon dioxide, map a feasible potential transport route from the power station to the storage area and have no foreseeable barriers to retrofitting CCS.

The UK's Committee on Climate Change has recommended that conventional coal-fired power generation should only be built on the expectation that it will be retro-fitted with CCS by the early 2020s. The demonstrations proposed will be on around 400MW of gross generation output (300MW net output).

Three ‘carbon budgets’

Chancellor Alistair Darling set out new measures designed to help low carbon industries capitalise on the opportunities presented by the UK’s legally binding target to cut greenhouse gas emissions to at least 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.

He announced:·a legally binding carbon budgets for the first three five-year periods 2008-2012, 2013-2017 and 2018-2022;
a revised target to reduce emissions to at least 34% below 1990 emissions by 2018-22; and · an aim to meet the carbon budgets through domestic action alone.

Darling also announced new support for low carbon industries, ranging from energy efficiency and renewables through to carbon capture and storage. The budget provided more than £1.4bn of extra targeted support in the low carbon sector.

These measures, together with announcements made since last autumn, will enable an additional £10.4bn of low carbon investment over the next three years, the chancellor said.