Chris Huhne, secretary of state for energy and climate change, reacted to a report published in The Guardian claiming that the government will not approve an emissions performance standard that will require all new coal power plants to install carbon capture and sequestration technology.
In a letter posted on the department’s Web site, Mr. Huhne called the report incorrect and ludicrous. He said the results of a consultation on electricity market reform will be out within six months of the election held in May while a white paper is due within a year.
“We consider planning applications thoroughly and will not allow any new coal power station to be built without being equipped with carbon capture and storage,” he vowed.
He said the government has yet to consult on the final details of the standard but he vowed that carbon capture would be impossible to meet without it.
But Mr. Huhne insisted that the standard will not be a cure-all to lower the country’s carbon emissions. He said overhauling the power market is necessary to secure a low-carbon energy future.
Emissions performance standards have been in place in the state of California in the United States since 2006, which limits carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour on all baseload electricity generation to 1,100 pounds. This is widely considered a leading reference for proposed limits in other parts of the world.
The World Coal Institute argues that the standard essentially prevents the construction of coal power plants since efficient ones emit about 1,500 pounds while older plants emit 1,800 pounds of the heat-trapping gas per MWh. Some groups have called for even tougher standards in Europe.
Carbon capture and storage is an emerging technology slowly being adopted in some countries to limit emissions spewed by coal-fired plants. It is a broad term encompassing a number of technologies that captures carbon dioxide from point sources, such as power plants and other industrial facilities, then inject it deep underground.
Cleaning the industry’s act is crucial since it currently supplies 39 percent of the world’s electricity at the cost of producing roughly 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
The U.K. Carbon Capture and Storage Community said that Britain’s numerous oil and gas fields are perhaps the best places to store the greenhouse gas. A study in 1996 estimates that the country has space for about 5.3 gigatons in depleted oil fields and about 11 gigatons to 15 gigatons in depleted gas fields. These oil fields can supposedly hold 10 years’ worth of the country’s total emissions, while gas fields can store 30 years’ worth.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change believes that carbon capture and storage can reduce the emissions of power stations throughout Britain by around 90 percent. However, the technology is often criticized for being too young to be deployed at scale.
