CCS

Whilst the influence of George Osborne on energy and environment policies has long been of concern, the progress made on the international stage by Blair and Prescott, and on the domestic front by Miliband’s Climate Change Act, plus the restraining influence of the Lib Dems during the coalition, have meant that that the UK’s progress on climate issues has been substantial enough to take time and effort to undo.

However, Osborne has the time, and appears to be putting in the effort.

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.

Ed Miliband today announced the details of his new coal consultation. While recognising the need to reduce emissions from coal-fired power stations, as promised, it places equal emphasis on maintaining a "diverse, secure energy mix".

We've made some progress on the coal campaign lately, with Climate and Energy Minister Ed Miliband finally ruling out any new coal-fired power stations that don't capture a proportion of the carbon they emit. But that's not nearly enough to save the climate.

It's certainly far from everything we've been asking for, but when Ed Miliband announced his new consultation on coal policy in the House of Commons this lunchtime it was clear that something had changed. For starters, E.ON isn’t going to get its way over Kingsnorth, at least not with its current plan.

Showing admirable signs of climate leadership in the face of resistance from Whitehall officials and his cabinet colleagues, the Energy and Climate Change secretary told MPs that no new coal-fired power stations would be built in Britain unless  equipped with at least some carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. In a key departure from previous policy, he said that from now on power companies planning to build new coal plants will be required to fit full CCS by 2025 at the latest, provided that the Environment Agency is convinced that the technology works.