Commenting on the launch today of a new government consultation on the future of coal in Britain, Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said:
"The fact that there is even a consultation on coal is welcome, given that this time last year policy was being decided by myopic ministers in thrall to regressive civil servants, but Ed Miliband needs to go further. His proposed policy leaves us with the threat of a massive new coal plant at Kingsnorth that would only capture and bury a quarter of its emissions and pump out six million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, making it the dirtiest new power station built in Britain for decades."
He continued:
"Britain could and should be a global leader on climate change and Ed Miliband has the power to make that happen, but first he has to rule out emissions from new coal-fired power stations, like Kingsnorth, and set a deadline for closing the existing coal plants like Drax."
He added:
"If Ed Miliband rules out emissions from new coal plants he'll be able to go to the vital Copenhagen climate conference with the credibility to demand a strong global deal to succeed Kyoto."
ENDS
Greenpeace press office - 0207 864 8255
Notes:
On Thursday 23rd April Ed Miliband told Parliament "the era of new unabated coal is over." Given that E.ON still planned to pour the concrete for a completely unabated station at Kingsnorth last summer, this was a significant U-turn in government policy.
However, whilst it
marks a break from all of the previous Energy Secretaries who consistently
failed to lay down the gauntlet to the utilities over their climate change
emissions, even Miliband's own officials admitted on the day that large parts of
his policy remain "unclear."
This is an understatement. It is not clear how Britain could hit its legally binding carbon budget for a 34% reduction in CO2 by 2020 were new coal stations to go ahead under the current proposals. Furthermore, huge questions remain about what the new coal policy will look like, and with significant loopholes presenting a real threat.
As things stand, the
controversial new plant at Kingsnorth in Kent
will only capture and bury a quarter of its massive emissions under Miliband's
policy. It will still pump 6 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every
year - on it's own causing double
the total annual CO2 emissions of the country of Nepal
with its population of 30 million people.
The world's pre-eminent climate scientist, Professor James Hansen, who is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is so concerned about plans for new coal plants in Britain that he has campaigned to stop Kingsnorth. He argued that with the Kingsnorth decision Ministers have the potential to influence "the future of the planet" (1).
He has called coal
stations "death factories" (2)
and said, "The only practical way
to prevent CO2 levels from going far into the dangerous range, with disastrous
effects for humanity and other inhabitants of the planet, is to phase out use of
coal except at power plants where the CO2 is captured and sequestered"
(3).
Equally, Sir Martin Rees, President of the prestigious Royal Society, wrote to the Energy Minister saying, "I (therefore) suggest that the government only gives consent to any new coal- fired power station, such as Kingsnorth, on condition that the operating permits are withdrawn if the plant fails to capture 90% of its carbon dioxide emissions by 2020. This would send a clear policy signal to industry of the need to develop and deploy CCS as quickly as possible" (4).
Sir David King - the government's
former chief scientist - said, "There's
little doubt that if we burn all of the coal that sits below the earth's
surface, we can return the planet to the condition it was in 50 million years
ago when the Antarctic was a tropical forest and much of the rest of the planet
would be pretty difficult for human beings to live on...We've got to see that coal
is not a useful resource to burn unless we can recapture the carbon that is
produced by burning it."
He added of CCS,
"This is still unproven technology and I
think until it's proven, it's dangerous to assume that we can continue to use
coal" (5).
Lord Stern of Brentford, the world's foremost climate change economist and author of the ground breaking Stern Review, in interview with the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, supported the view that coal stations like the one proposed for Kingsnorth should not be approved without CCS (6).
The single greatest threat to the climate comes from burning coal. Coal-fired generation is historically responsible for most of the fossil-fuel CO2 in the air today, about half of all fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions globally (7).
Coal-fired power generation is the most environmentally damaging means of generating electricity yet devised. In fact, in carbon terms, coal is the dirtiest fuel known to man (8).
As we close old coal-fired and nuclear power stations in the next decade we will lose capacity currently providing around a quarter of our electricity output. But Gordon Brown committed to legally binding European targets which require us to generate up to 40% of our electricity from renewables by 2020. The UK also has fairly ambitious energy efficiency targets that would if implemented reduce energy demand (9).
According to Europe's leading independent energy experts, Pöyry, if the UK was to hit these existing renewables and efficiency targets in 2020, there would be no need for additional new conventional power stations in that time. They could close the ‘energy gap' with clean renewable energy, while also creating jobs, boosting the economy and reducing gas use. In other words, we can keep the lights on, cut emissions, and in the long run bring down fuel bills too - all without any new coal-fired plants (10).
1 Dr. James E. Hansen, open letter to Gordon Brown, December 2007 http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/letter-to-the-prime-minister-20071219
2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/15/james-hansen-power-plants-coal
3 Dr. Jim Hansen, Testimony to the State of Iowa, 2007 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/IowaCoal_071105.pdf
4 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/03/fossilfuels.energy
5 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/08/01/eapower101.xml
6 BBC Radio 4, Today programme, 6th October 2008
7 Dr. James E. Hansen, open letter to Gordon Brown, December 2007 http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/letter-to-the-prime-minister-20071219
8 IPCC Working Group III Fourth Assessment Report chapter 4 table 4.9
Supercritical coal plants emit 710gCO2/Kwh compared to 404gCO2/Kwh for CCGT (gas), for example.
9 The UK efficiency target is to achieve an 18% reduction in end-use energy demand against current rates of increase.
10 http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto073120082322523374&page=2
