Coal: going, going, gone?

Posted by jossc — 4 January 2010 at 6:37pm - Comments

It's been a long, difficult and wild ride at times, but an end to climate damaging carbon emissions from new coal power stations could be in sight at last. Finally, some politicians seem to have recognised that we can't cut our CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 AND keep pumping the stuff out of our power plants - hooray!

Last December the government announced a new energy bill that explicitly recognises this reality. So far so good - but (as you'll be shocked to discover) there's a problem. As yet the bill has no teeth - whilst it says that new power stations must be able to capture some of their emissions from the get go, it contains no guarantee that by 2025 all carbon emissions from coal must be captured, and that's the bit that really counts.

That's just not good enough - we need the bill to include an emissions performance standard on power stations to ensure we are not locked into a future of high carbon emissions from coal. If not, the three years of hard work it's taken to get to this stage could go to waste.

Act now: Ask your MP to back a strong emission performance standard for all power stations

Back in 2006, when the government first announced plans for a new generation of coal-fired power plants, there was no mention (or seeming awareness) of the long-term danger to the climate from continuing to pump out CO2 into the atmosphere. They simply wanted the new plants because coal had become relatively cheap again in comparison to gas. Unbelievably John Hutton, the minister in charge of this policy, showed no interest in the fact that coal is the most climate damaging of all fuels that we could use to power our economy; his attitude was "so what if we miss our carbon reduction targets - so long as the fuel is cheap".

In January 2007 Hutton, began to consider a request from German utility E.on to build the first new coal plant for 30 years at Kingsnorth in Kent. This first station would be followed by up to nine similar plants around the UK. When it became clear that the minister had every intention of waving all this climate crime through en masse, Greenpeace took action - shutting down the existing Kingsnorth plant to reduce its CO2 output. More than 30 activists were arrested.

We kept up the pressure the following January when, using email traffic obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, we exposed collusion between E.ON and Hutton's department BERR, over potential conditions for a Kingsnorth approval. The next month we blockaded the annual coal industry conference at Lord’s Cricket grounds, which was due to be addressed by Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks. And former Beatle Paul McCartney offered his support to our protesters as he walked past the stadium.

By mid-2008 the message was starting to get through - you can't sign up to drastically reduce damaging carbon emissions and build a new tranche of unabated coal power plants at the same time. The Royal Society, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives all went on record insisting that no new coal plants should be built without capturing at least 90 per cent of the carbon emissions.

Thick and fast they came: in August 2008 Sir David King, the government’s former chief science adviser, said it was dangerous to assume we could keep using coal until carbon capture technology was proven; Climate Campers targeted Kingsnorth for ten days; six Greenpeace activists who shut down Kingsnorth were acquitted by a jury after hearing evidence from leading climate scientists including NASA's James Hansen; John Hutton lost his job to be replaced by a new decision maker on Kingsnorth - Secretary of State for Climate and Energy Ed Miliband.

In October the Stop Climate Chaos coalition (including the Women's Institute, RSPB, Oxfam and Tearfund) joined the Rainbow Warrior to deliver a pledge against Kingsnorth on behalf of its four million members. By December the game was practically up - Lord Turner and the Committee on Climate Change, commissioned by the prime minister to advise the government on how to meet its legal commitments under the Climate Act, told Mr Brown that by 2020 no coal plant should be allowed to operate without full carbon capture (CCS) capabilities.

And in April 2009 Ed Miliband announced a review of coal policy which ruled out new unabated coal stations and examined CCS options. In July many of you joined with us and other Big If supporters to symbolically surround Kingsnorth at the Miliband event. Shortly afterwards Ed published his proposals and, at face value they looked pretty good - any new coal plant must capture at least a portion of its CO2 from the outset, and should be capturing all its carbon emissions by 2025.

But there's a catch - although the policy looks strong on paper, it is not clear how the government can enforce the 2025 deadline on power companies, and it's hard to believe they would be willing to close down power stations that do not have full CCS once they are up and running.

What is needed is an emissions performance standard, which will limit emissions from all new coal plants from day one, and then reduce over time until emissions from coal plants are totally phased out by the early 2020s. Thanks to Arnie, this method has been working in California for some years now, and we need it here. That why we are supporting an amendment to the energy bill, which would bring in an emissions performance standard strong enough to guarantee that emissions from UK coal plants will not jeopardise our climate targets, or our future.  

Take Action

Ask your MP to sign Alan Simpson’s amendment to the energy bill (New Clause 5) to include an emissions performance standard for all power stations »

No, that's not what's being said. The UK has committed to reduce it's CO2 emissions by 80% (taking 1990 as a baseline) by the year 2050. So if we hit our targets carbon pollution will be a fraction of what it is today, and there's a good chance that we can limit global warming to managable levels.

The problem is that, if we build a new generation of coal fired power stations then those targets can almost certainly not be achieved, we will overshoot and the result will be a 3% or more increase in global temberatures by the end of the century, which will in turn cause more extreme weather events, melting icecaps and sea-level rises, forcing mass migration of populations as water supplies dry up and available land for farming declines.

Which is why the argument for taking action now to minimise these effects is such a strong one.

Joss @ GPUK webteam

No, that's not what's being said. The UK has committed to reduce it's CO2 emissions by 80% (taking 1990 as a baseline) by the year 2050. So if we hit our targets carbon pollution will be a fraction of what it is today, and there's a good chance that we can limit global warming to managable levels.

The problem is that, if we build a new generation of coal fired power stations then those targets can almost certainly not be achieved, we will overshoot and the result will be a 3% or more increase in global temberatures by the end of the century, which will in turn cause more extreme weather events, melting icecaps and sea-level rises, forcing mass migration of populations as water supplies dry up and available land for farming declines.

Which is why the argument for taking action now to minimise these effects is such a strong one.

Joss @ GPUK webteam

About Joss

Bass player and backing vox in the four piece beat combo that is the UK Greenpeace Web Experience. In my 6 years here I've worked on almost every campaign and been fascinated by them all to varying degrees. Just now I'm working on Peace and Oceans - which means getting rid of our Trident nuclear weapons system and creating large marine reserves so that marine life can get some protection from overfishing.

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