Analysis piece for PE’s June issue on the UK’s budget and its energy implications. The government is almost toast — and will be within a year — but their energy policy is a good one.
The UK government has put clean coal and other environmental initiatives on the country’s agenda, reports Derek Brower
SPRING is the time for green shoots in the UK. Still in the deep-freeze of the global recession, the government has proposed a series of initiatives to promote clean energy and avert climate change. The main announcement was a decision to put carbon capture and storage (CCS) at the centre of plans to build a new generation of coal-fired power plants. If it works, it could make the UK a world leader in clean coal. CCS, an emerging technology that could one day capture all power-plant carbon emissions, will now be mandatory for any new coal facility in the UK. The government wants four prototype plants built quickly.
There are caveats. CCS is not proved commercially, although there are small plants operating in continental Europe and in Canada. So the government’s proposal is that new plants must capture 25% of emissions now, and all of them by 2025, when it expects the technology to be mainstream. That is a big lead time, but it should still focus minds.
If it works, another stipulation is that all existing plants be retrofitted with CCS “within five years of the technology being independently judged as technically and commercially proved”. Ed Miliband, the secretary of state for climate change, says the Environment Agency, a government watchdog, will judge when the standard is met.
Nothing is likely to happen quickly. (…) The rest is for subscribers, I’m afraid.
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