The UK’s carbon capture contretemps - April 24, 2009

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The UK government has pressed ahead in its support for carbon capture and storage (CCS), but appears to be relying on electricity consumers to fund the technology.

Following Wednesday’s budget announcement that the government would fund up to four demonstration CCS projects, energy secretary Ed Miliband added yesterday that any new coal-fired power station built in the UK must demonstrate CCS on 400MW of its output. (E.ON’s proposed coal plant in Kingsnorth, which may be built by 2014, will generate about 1600MW in total).

And by 2025, if the technology is “proven” - a judgement to be made by the Environment Agency - new coal-fired power stations would have to retrofit CCS across their entire output.

Miliband’s speech gained unaccustomed props from environmental groups. But they noted that he stopped short of insisting that no coal station - whether new or existing - should operate without full CCS, as the UK’s Climate Change Committee recommended, and as climate guru Jim Hansen has called for.“To have 100 per cent CCS from day one I don’t think would be practical or affordable,” Miliband said (Financial Times). “For every tonne of carbon captured and buried from new coal plants before the 2020s, the government seems happy to see three tonnes released into the atmosphere,” said Greenpeace’s John Sauven.

A spokesperson for Miliband’s Department for Energy and Climate Change confirmed to The Great Beyond that the funds required to support the demonstration projects (each costing around £1 billion) would be raised from electricity suppliers, and thus ultimately paid for by a levy on consumers’ electricity bills, of up to 2 per cent by 2020 (which The Times works out as £30 per household per year).

This money would be disbursed by an “incentive mechanism”, potentially based on CCS projects receiving a higher fixed tariff for the electricity they generate, or for the carbon dioxide emissions they abate. These suggestions are to be consulted on over 12 weeks starting in early summer, as are Miliband’s headline proposals - and on when to demand CCS retrofits to existing coal plants.

“At long last the government is putting some momentum into CCS,” Jeff Chapman, of the UK’s carbon capture and storage association, told the FT. “It’s now three years since the first consultation on this. Let this be the last consultation and let’s get on with it.”