Could dirty coal make a comeback?

Photo by Bruno D Rodrigues.

This year oil companies have been the main target of environmental campaigns, following the Deepwater Horizon spill in the US. But last year’s climate villain might be making a comeback. A key election promise has been dropped, which could allow high-emissions coal plants to be built.

In 2009, campaigners won a victory against coal power plants when the government promised no new coal plants would be built in the UK without carbon capture and storage (CCS). Last week, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne announced £1bn to fund four new CCS plants.

When in opposition the Tories called for an ‘Emissions Performance Standard’ (EPS), setting maximum level of CO2 power plants can emit, effectively ruling out unabated coal. The EPS was originally intended to be part of the Energy Act 2010 – but in August, the government decided to cut this commitment. They are currently carrying out a consultation on the EPS that will report back in the spring.

In the absence of the EPS, there is a possibility that new coal-fired power stations could be pushed through without any CCS technology. What is more likely is that power stations will be fitted with CCS, but will only have a token amount of their emissions captured.

A planned coal-fired power station at Hunterston, Scotland, is one of the proposed test sites. It will only have CCS technology to capture less than 18% of emissions. The carbon capture process will also reduce the total plant’s efficiency by about 5%, according to developers Ayrshire Power.

This means that Hunterston is only fractionally more carbon-efficient than a normal coal power station, and will be working for 40 years. This contrasts with the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee, which estimates that power generation will have to be largely carbon-free by 2030 to meet emissions reduction targets.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) website notes that demonstration plants like Hunterston are “expected to” retrofit CCS to their full capacity by 2025, although if the process doesn’t work or is too expensive, it is unlikely that these multi-billion pound plants will shut down. It is more likely that they will continue to pour CO2 into the atmosphere.

Indeed, CCS is still unproven on a large, permanent scale – the emissions could escape, negating all carbon savings and possibly causing other environmental disasters. Incidentally, due to a strange loophole in planning regulations, it is impossible to make planning objections to Hunterston on environmental grounds – local residents can only give aesthetic reasons for their objections.

For campaigners, the battle against coal is far from over. ‘Clean coal’ might turn out to be the same old dirty coal, this time with a thin coating of greenwash.

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