New coal: the battlelines are drawn

Posted by bex — 3 January 2008 at 11:15am - Comments

Coal fired power plant

It will be the UK's first new coal fired power plant in 34 years. It will emit as much carbon dioxide as the 30 least polluting nations in the world combined. And the world's leading climate scientist has called it "a tipping point for the world".

The proposal for a new coal-fired power plant at Kingsnorth in Kent has been given the go-ahead by Medway Council. At a meeting last night, only three of the 16 councillers objected to E.ON's application, meaning that the plant - which will generate electricity in the most climate-wrecking way known to humankind - has been approved, potentially starting a new coal rush in the UK.

The decision now goes over to Gordon Brown. It's the defining climate decision of his premiership: whether to kiss goodbye to his government's own emissions reductions targets, or whether to take a stand against new coal.

A couple of weeks ago, Dr. James Hansen, the director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote a letter to Brown, warning him that his "leadership is needed on a matter concerning coal-fired power plants in your country, a matter with ramifications for life on our planet, including all species."

Energy giant E.ON is justifying its plans by claiming the plant will use "cleaner coal" ie carbon capture and storage (CCS). But there are no commercially viable CCS plants anywhere in the world, and a definitive UN report from the IPCC says the technology won't be viable for decades. CCS is an unproven technology which even the Chancellor Alistair Darling has said may never work.

We have a decade left before our emissions must peak and E.ON - Britain's biggest polluter - is building a plant that will pump out 8.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year until, at some unspecified point in a few decades' time, a technology to capture and store carbon may or may not become viable.

The decision's now on Brown's desk and, as Dr Hansen says, it's absolutely vital that he takes clear and decisive action. You can join our campaign against Kingsnorth by writing to Gordon Brown and telling him to say no to new coal.

Article tagged as: climate change, coal, energy, kingsnorth
Comments Commenting is now closed

We've been campaigning hard for CHP for a long time - see here, for example.

In terms of Kingsnorth having CHP, we wouldn't support any CHP run purely on coal as emissions would be way to high. To quote from another comment I wrote a while back:

From E.ON's press release they reckon they could heat 50-100,000 homes with such a scheme. That may sound a lot but, compared with the scale of Kingsnorth, it falls well short of what's needed to make the plant as efficient as it should be or to reduce the carbon intensity to an acceptable level.

The point is really, the overall efficiency of the plant: just how much energy (heat+electricity) do you get out of it for the CO2 emissions. There's a strong case for setting a bar, a minimum carbon intensity standard, below which any new fossil fuel plant would be ruled out. A sensible place to put this might be at the same level as a good quality gas-fuelled CHP plant; any plant with more CO2 emissions per unit of useful energy produced than this would be ruled out. A CHP plant running purely on coal certainly wouldn't meet this standard. And one the size of Kingsnorth and only supplying 100,000 homes would be way, way off. But a state of the art CHP plant, like those in Denmark, running on a mixture of fuels that included some coal along with a significant amount of sustainable biofuels might well meet the standard.

So, basically: We support super-efficient, multi-fuel CHP as the most efficient, flexible form of generating energy with the most scope for getting even cleaner in the future (by increasing the amount of cleaner fuels it uses as they become available). We certainly wouldn't support a CHP plant run purely on coal as the emissions would still be much too high. But, depending on the overall efficiency, we might accept that coal could be used as a part of the mix going into a multi-fuel CHP plant.

That kind of plant on the Kingsnorth site might have to be smaller than the current E.ON proposal because you need enough customers for the heat in order to make it super efficient. But that’s the point: this location isn’t the only place in the UK that new power plants can be built! The size and location of power plants should be chosen to allow the most efficient, state of the art technology to be used in every case – not just as an add on or an afterthought. In the coming years we have to rebuild our energy system whether we like it or not – the money will get spent one way or the other. So the decision we have to make is what we spend that money on: whether to have the same inefficient, dirty, centralised system all over again – and get locked into it for another 50 years, or whether to start building a more flexible, super-efficient and low carbon decentralised energy system now. E.ON’s proposals, even with their scoping study, push us firmly down the wrong path.

Cheers,

Bex
gpuk

By bex - 8 January 2008 at 1:16pm

We've been campaigning hard for CHP for a long time - see here, for example. In terms of Kingsnorth having CHP, we wouldn't support any CHP run purely on coal as emissions would be way to high. To quote from another comment I wrote a while back: From E.ON's press release they reckon they could heat 50-100,000 homes with such a scheme. That may sound a lot but, compared with the scale of Kingsnorth, it falls well short of what's needed to make the plant as efficient as it should be or to reduce the carbon intensity to an acceptable level. The point is really, the overall efficiency of the plant: just how much energy (heat+electricity) do you get out of it for the CO2 emissions. There's a strong case for setting a bar, a minimum carbon intensity standard, below which any new fossil fuel plant would be ruled out. A sensible place to put this might be at the same level as a good quality gas-fuelled CHP plant; any plant with more CO2 emissions per unit of useful energy produced than this would be ruled out. A CHP plant running purely on coal certainly wouldn't meet this standard. And one the size of Kingsnorth and only supplying 100,000 homes would be way, way off. But a state of the art CHP plant, like those in Denmark, running on a mixture of fuels that included some coal along with a significant amount of sustainable biofuels might well meet the standard. So, basically: We support super-efficient, multi-fuel CHP as the most efficient, flexible form of generating energy with the most scope for getting even cleaner in the future (by increasing the amount of cleaner fuels it uses as they become available). We certainly wouldn't support a CHP plant run purely on coal as the emissions would still be much too high. But, depending on the overall efficiency, we might accept that coal could be used as a part of the mix going into a multi-fuel CHP plant. That kind of plant on the Kingsnorth site might have to be smaller than the current E.ON proposal because you need enough customers for the heat in order to make it super efficient. But that’s the point: this location isn’t the only place in the UK that new power plants can be built! The size and location of power plants should be chosen to allow the most efficient, state of the art technology to be used in every case – not just as an add on or an afterthought. In the coming years we have to rebuild our energy system whether we like it or not – the money will get spent one way or the other. So the decision we have to make is what we spend that money on: whether to have the same inefficient, dirty, centralised system all over again – and get locked into it for another 50 years, or whether to start building a more flexible, super-efficient and low carbon decentralised energy system now. E.ON’s proposals, even with their scoping study, push us firmly down the wrong path. Cheers, Bex gpuk

By bex - 8 January 2008 at 1:16pm

Comments

Follow Greenpeace UK