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
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"Greenpeace say that the proposal by German energy company E.ON to build a new coal-fired power station which will emit up to 10m tonnes of CO2 a year are totally at odds with government targets for cutting C02 emissions."

Yes, EON, the company that run the 'Wind of Change' TV ads giving us all the impression that they are a green company. Of course like the rest of them they're only in it to make a fast buck - just like wind farm developers and the land owners who want to destroy vast areas of the remaining landscape with clusters of inefficient wind farms in order to get their huge cash subsidies form the government.

By Bourne_Woodman - 7 January 2008 at 11:15pm

The potential for electricity generation from piped heat supply to retrofit our cities and use the waste heat from power generation to heat the cities as they did for Danish cities such as Odense, is estimated by DEFRA in its October 2007 analysis of the UK potential for Clean Heat and Power (CHP) at 33,125 MW of electricity generation Kingsnorth has a capacity or 2000MW. The primary energy savings from the piped heat supply alternative are estimated at 159,881 GWhr per annum by DEFRA and Kingsnorth could contribute about one fifteenth of this saving if it set out to heat the Medway towns and link up with Grain and other Thames side power stations to heat London.

The bottom of the Thames would be an ideal location for such pipes is practical to supply heat over long distances and Aarhus a city in Denmark with a population of 267,000 is heated from a coal fired power station 10 miles from the city centre. Larger cities support much longer distances for economic heat supply.
In the same way it is economic to supply Manchester with cold water by piping it from the Lake District.

Piped heat for UK cities can readily meets UK CO2 targets at a stroke and diminish or remove the case for nuclear electricity only generation as a means of meeting CO2 emission targets.

Odense with its piped heat uses either coal gas or oil in its power plant. The CO2 footprint of the waste heat is lower than the CO2 footprint of gas and it is the use of this heat in the heat sector to displace higher CO2 heat from other sources that gives the very large energy and CO2 savings.

Use of waste heat from power generation makes no savings in the electricity sector but it can achieve 100% saving in the heat sector.

Relevant figures are CO2 footprint of delivered waste heat from coal fired electricity generation with heat supply at 90C flow and 40C return, to households is around 0.079 kg CO2/kWh. Heat from a 75% efficient old gas boiler is 0.255 kg CO2/kWh and heat from micro one kW domestic CHP only 6% efficient in conversion to fuel from electricity from gas is not much better than the boiler at 0.212 kg CO2/kWh

Saving of CO2 using piped reject heat from coal fired electricity generation in the heat is Thus 0.175kg/CO2 per kWh of heat supply compared to the old gas boiler and 0.133kg/CO2 compared to the 1kW micro CHP. Gas before it is burnt has a CO2 footprint of 0.191 kg/CO2 per kWh. Thus every unit of waste heat from Kingsnorth effectively nearly saves most of the emissions from a building and will give on connection one of the best CO2 ratings.

Large scale CHP gives the greatest savings of CO2 as the best CHP units are the ones that convert as much fuel as possible to electricity and produce the least waste heat.
The widely promoted micro 1kW for every dwelling produces very little electricity and a lot of heat and this is why it has a CO2 footprint for its heat that is close to the footprint of boiler heat. (Micro CHP accelerator report Carbon Trust is the source of 6% figure achieved by some units on test)

The main advantage of micro 1kw CHP in every dwelling is it allows the gas industry to retain its domestic consumer base and prevent the sort of competition that piped heat offers with its ability to use biomass and other sources of heat and switch fuels to the lowest cost fuel at the time to benefit consumers.

Greenpeace should reconsider its campaigning on coal as opposing coal may merely hastens the need to building of low CO2 nuclear power.

Can I suggest that suggest Greenpeace runs a campaign to oppose the huge current waste when any fuel is converted to electricity whether from coal, Biomass, oil, gas or nuclear fuels?
A positive campaign for all new power generation is built in locations so that its waste heat can be piped to heat cities is a very sustainable option.

It is practical to use gas fired 500kW CHP at most electricity substations to develop many local heat networks. Every unit installed will back up wind and also release capacity in the transmission to reduce the cost of reinforcing transmission systems the high electrical efficiency of these units of around 34% means they are excellent CO2 diplacers.

With stand by fuel supplies such a system, would as it is interconnected
secure our heat and electricity supplies against transmission failure one of the weakest links in our current system.

Once fully interconnected then the main supplies of electricity and heat change and come from a mixture of large fossil fired CHP stations that produce even greater savings than the 500kW units and wind. The local CHP units used to develop the piped heat system are then used as peak load units and standby for wind and other generation.

Their fast response to load and quick start up make them particularly suitable for matching wind.

Such a scenario reduces any need for nuclear power but also guarantees that if nuclear has to be built we need less nuclear stations as we could use the two thirds of the energy from the nuclear fuel to pipe heat to cities. Calder Hall ran as Nuclear CHP for many years in Cumbria.

Suggest a change in tack to make development of Kingsnorth conditional on it being CHP.

Clean Heat.

CC Robin Webster FOE

By CleanHeat - 8 January 2008 at 12:03am

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

"Greenpeace say that the proposal by German energy company E.ON to build a new coal-fired power station which will emit up to 10m tonnes of CO2 a year are totally at odds with government targets for cutting C02 emissions." Yes, EON, the company that run the 'Wind of Change' TV ads giving us all the impression that they are a green company. Of course like the rest of them they're only in it to make a fast buck - just like wind farm developers and the land owners who want to destroy vast areas of the remaining landscape with clusters of inefficient wind farms in order to get their huge cash subsidies form the government.

By Bourne_Woodman - 7 January 2008 at 11:15pm

The potential for electricity generation from piped heat supply to retrofit our cities and use the waste heat from power generation to heat the cities as they did for Danish cities such as Odense, is estimated by DEFRA in its October 2007 analysis of the UK potential for Clean Heat and Power (CHP) at 33,125 MW of electricity generation Kingsnorth has a capacity or 2000MW. The primary energy savings from the piped heat supply alternative are estimated at 159,881 GWhr per annum by DEFRA and Kingsnorth could contribute about one fifteenth of this saving if it set out to heat the Medway towns and link up with Grain and other Thames side power stations to heat London. The bottom of the Thames would be an ideal location for such pipes is practical to supply heat over long distances and Aarhus a city in Denmark with a population of 267,000 is heated from a coal fired power station 10 miles from the city centre. Larger cities support much longer distances for economic heat supply. In the same way it is economic to supply Manchester with cold water by piping it from the Lake District. Piped heat for UK cities can readily meets UK CO2 targets at a stroke and diminish or remove the case for nuclear electricity only generation as a means of meeting CO2 emission targets. Odense with its piped heat uses either coal gas or oil in its power plant. The CO2 footprint of the waste heat is lower than the CO2 footprint of gas and it is the use of this heat in the heat sector to displace higher CO2 heat from other sources that gives the very large energy and CO2 savings. Use of waste heat from power generation makes no savings in the electricity sector but it can achieve 100% saving in the heat sector. Relevant figures are CO2 footprint of delivered waste heat from coal fired electricity generation with heat supply at 90C flow and 40C return, to households is around 0.079 kg CO2/kWh. Heat from a 75% efficient old gas boiler is 0.255 kg CO2/kWh and heat from micro one kW domestic CHP only 6% efficient in conversion to fuel from electricity from gas is not much better than the boiler at 0.212 kg CO2/kWh Saving of CO2 using piped reject heat from coal fired electricity generation in the heat is Thus 0.175kg/CO2 per kWh of heat supply compared to the old gas boiler and 0.133kg/CO2 compared to the 1kW micro CHP. Gas before it is burnt has a CO2 footprint of 0.191 kg/CO2 per kWh. Thus every unit of waste heat from Kingsnorth effectively nearly saves most of the emissions from a building and will give on connection one of the best CO2 ratings. Large scale CHP gives the greatest savings of CO2 as the best CHP units are the ones that convert as much fuel as possible to electricity and produce the least waste heat. The widely promoted micro 1kW for every dwelling produces very little electricity and a lot of heat and this is why it has a CO2 footprint for its heat that is close to the footprint of boiler heat. (Micro CHP accelerator report Carbon Trust is the source of 6% figure achieved by some units on test) The main advantage of micro 1kw CHP in every dwelling is it allows the gas industry to retain its domestic consumer base and prevent the sort of competition that piped heat offers with its ability to use biomass and other sources of heat and switch fuels to the lowest cost fuel at the time to benefit consumers. Greenpeace should reconsider its campaigning on coal as opposing coal may merely hastens the need to building of low CO2 nuclear power. Can I suggest that suggest Greenpeace runs a campaign to oppose the huge current waste when any fuel is converted to electricity whether from coal, Biomass, oil, gas or nuclear fuels? A positive campaign for all new power generation is built in locations so that its waste heat can be piped to heat cities is a very sustainable option. It is practical to use gas fired 500kW CHP at most electricity substations to develop many local heat networks. Every unit installed will back up wind and also release capacity in the transmission to reduce the cost of reinforcing transmission systems the high electrical efficiency of these units of around 34% means they are excellent CO2 diplacers. With stand by fuel supplies such a system, would as it is interconnected secure our heat and electricity supplies against transmission failure one of the weakest links in our current system. Once fully interconnected then the main supplies of electricity and heat change and come from a mixture of large fossil fired CHP stations that produce even greater savings than the 500kW units and wind. The local CHP units used to develop the piped heat system are then used as peak load units and standby for wind and other generation. Their fast response to load and quick start up make them particularly suitable for matching wind. Such a scenario reduces any need for nuclear power but also guarantees that if nuclear has to be built we need less nuclear stations as we could use the two thirds of the energy from the nuclear fuel to pipe heat to cities. Calder Hall ran as Nuclear CHP for many years in Cumbria. Suggest a change in tack to make development of Kingsnorth conditional on it being CHP. Clean Heat. CC Robin Webster FOE

By CleanHeat - 8 January 2008 at 12:03am

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

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