Economy First: Britain Puts Decarbonisation On Hold
Allegra Stratton, The Guardian, 16 August 2010
The coalition is watering down a commitment to tough new environmental emissions standards, raising the possibility of dirty coal-fired power stations such as Kingsnorth going ahead.
Green groups are aghast that a flagship policy called for in opposition by both Lib Dems and Tories, and which they last year tried to force on the Labour government, will now not be implemented in the coalition’s first energy bill to be published this year.
Their criticism of the government’s commitment to green issues follows news last week that nature reserves could be sold off as countryside protection measures also bear the brunt of budget cuts in the Department for Environment.
Introducing a so-called “environmental performance standard” (EPS) for power companies would have restricted greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas plants and encouraged companies wishing to build to use more efficient technology.
The introduction of an EPS was personally championed by David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg when in opposition; their opposition to Kingsnorth became something of a cause célèbre – and even features in the coalition agreement – but was opposed by energy companies and Tory backbenchers.
The chief executive at one coal-plant operating company warned that the UK’s renewable energy technology – which would be used to help new plants meet the target – was too undeveloped to make the EPS feasible.
Now government sources confirm they will not be bringing forward legislation in the autumn and will instead spend the summer working on “the larger picture”. They will open a consultation on the idea in the autumn with the results being presented to parliament as a white paper in the new year.
Green campaigners believe this is noncommittal for a policy both parts of the coalition said could be implemented immediately when in opposition.
They believe a delay in the introduction of the standard until next year – with a few years for the legislation to pass through the house and for it to be set up – raises the possibility of new coal-fire power stations slipping through the system.
Greenpeace energy campaigner, Joss Garman, said: “David Cameron made the introduction of new rules to stop the most polluting power stations one of his flagship green policies, and Nick Clegg helped ensure it was a key part of the coalition agreement.
“Both Lib Dem and Conservative MPs voted for the introduction of such a measure just a few months ago, and if they U-turn on this and fail to put this measure into their new energy law, how can they claim to be the greenest government ever?”
The energy company Peel Power has already come forward with a proposal in Scotland to build a largely unabated coal plant.
The government’s advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, said if the UK is to meet its climate targets it needs to decarbonise the whole power sector by 2030.
If the EPS is abandoned it would almost certainly reopen the debate about what the industry needs to change and encourage utilities to push forward with their original plans for a whole new fleet of dirty coal stations in the UK (the first to be built here for 30 years).
The consequences would be that the battle of Kingsnorth could be refought.
WUWT readers may recall the Dr. Jim Hansen went to Britain to defend vandals of this station. Story here. My reaction here.
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Most coal-fired power stations in the UK are now clean and non-polluting. They have retrofitted FGD (flue gas desulphurisation). At last a bit (a welcome but tiny bit) of common-sense is appearing in UK politics with regards to the energy policy. Unless they act quickly to build new coal-fired power stations, the lights will start to go out in a few years time.
Say it ain’t so. A 850 ton wind turbine tower is made from steel. It takes 1,350 tons of coal using the bessimer process to make the tower. (Algore says the wind stuff is carbon free) The tower base is 850 cubic yards of concrete most of which contains coal fly ash. Even Obama signed off on a 2 billion dollar coal plant last week in Illinois.
Coal is hot. I have shown it is not about the coal. It is about superstition caused when they think about coal.
The politicians are slowly backing away, there are plans to privatise, ( sell off ), the Met Office and most of our nature reserves, you should here the screams in the Guardian’s comment threads, most gratifying, I will enjoy an extra cold beer tonight and toast our governments baiting of the left.
I can only hope this comes true, alot of conservative back benchers are sceptical but couldnt say much as it didnt follow the party line, perhaps now when we can ill afford such luxurys as decarboniastion some sense will be seen. The greens wont lie down without a fight though and fight they will.
If it were about carbon or pollution or the environment, there would be thousands of studies on mammals and carbon dioxide levels–on intact creatures. There aren’t.
Because 100% CO2 is a popular way of killing excess lab animals, there are a few studies on the effects of 100 times atmosphere and more. Rats lose consciousness at 40% CO2 (400 000 ppm), 1000 times atmosphere and die at 70% CO2, about 2000 times atmospheric concentration.
But rats and other rodents are burrowing animals. Those typically have around 1% to 5% carbon dioxide in their burrows–50 to 200 times atmosphere. The greenies (so-called) are panicking about 10% increase in this life-giving gas.
I found two chicken egg studies which found that 50 times atmosphere would speed up hatching by about 3 hours (no wonder wild birds want well-protected nests–it will enable them to increase CO2 levels near their eggs and nestlings, hence speed development and enhance survival).
More CO2 at these levels means not only more food and more life–it means better heath, too. When we say so loudly enough, the world’s energy problems will be solved–life-giving energy sources are also the cheapest!
Esther Cook, August 16, 2010
Oh the irony is delicious. We finally have a Government (coalition) that is re-carbonising (apologies for the mangling of my Mother tongue) our energy sector so we don’t have to read by tallow light as our Green friends would have it.
My first reaction to the skyblue pinks we currently have in Government was that they were exactly the same as the last despotic lot. Now I see that they’re working some long-needed common sense back into the Legislature.
As both primary commenters post, coal fired power generation is 80-90% efficient at carbon capture. Our sack-cloth brethren are simply fanatical about any kind of carbon-consuming technology. What would they tell the crofters burning peat to do?
Henry chance says:
Say it ain’t so. A 850 ton wind turbine tower is made from steel. It takes 1,350 tons of coal using the bessimer process to make the tower. (Algore says the wind stuff is carbon free)… ”
Henry: There’s an excellent paper quantifying the direct generating and indirect including installation generation of CO2 from various power sources here:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf100.html
CO2 generation is a range depending on installation, but averages are 1,200 g CO2/KWh for coal, gas at 600 g/KWh, hydro has a big range but averages at 200 g/KWh, solar PV is 250, wind 30, and nuclear at 20 g/KWh. I expect they will add a category for solar concentrating when it grows to more than 1% of grid capacity.
That is, if you care about emitting CO2. Also, the UK is one of only four countries (along with Russia, France, and Japan) that reprocess nuclear power plant waste. You’d think they would build more nuke plants if they want low cost, low CO2 power.
Coal is the only solar energy that can deliver power efficiently on demand and at the lowest cost and it is clean (I dont count CO2 as dirty). Flue gas desulphurization units remove virtually all sulphur dioxide and particulates from off gasses, generating 10,900,000t of gypsum in the EU in 2008. In 2005, 9,790,000 of FGD gypsum was used in cement, plasters, wallboard, etc – virtually all of it. This beautiful technology continues to take hits from the self-hating nihilists that make up the brave new end-of-the-world set. I wish we could just stop apologizing and explaining for this industry and let this group shout their lungs out. It looks like this might be happening in UK and Germany which really means all of EU (the Spaniards are likely to remain quiet!!)
By George, welcome to sense and sanity!
As the German poet Schiller said: You may be coming late, but you are coming (spät kommt Ihr, doch Ihr kommt).
It was about Wallenstein; Wellington/Wellesley Waterloo (and Blücher) happened after Schiller’s death.
Deferring plans to abolish CO2 seems to be a growing trend. Perhaps the penny is starting to drop that ‘green’ renewable energy could only a satisfy a small part of our energy needs and traditional technology will still need to be used.
If it comes to a choice between nuclear and coal, give me fossil fuel generation every time. The risks to future generations from nuclear waste is still to great for it to be a larger part of the power mix.
Fantasy energy policy is for children’s books and I guess the pressure of having to make real decisions is starting to bite. Easy to appease ‘green’ until you are faced with the possibility of still being in office when the brown stuff starts hitting the rotating machinery.
Hoo-b****y-ray…
“…if the UK is to meet its climate targets it needs to decarbonise the whole power sector by 2030.”
There has been a lot of blather about wind in Britain. Someone in Britain must have finally read the studies that looked at Denmark, Texas and Colorado and discovered that CO2 emissions either were unchanged or went up as a result of wind penetration of more than a few percent. Also, no conventional power plants were closed. Every 1 MW of wind capacity needs 1 MW of reliable generation to back it up. Coal is a cheap source of reliable energy.
Perhaps eventually there will be announcements of a moratorium on constructing new wind farms in Britain until the performance (energy delivered, reliability, costs, impact on grid stability) of the existing wind farms can be assessed.
As the ‘renewable green pollution free’ rhetoric is shown to be logically impossible to realize, govt support for AGW will wane (now now now has to go!) There’s gonna be ‘responsibility timelines’ or something similar becoming the new push.
This isn’t left versus right, its nutjob new religionists versus humanity. So lets not alienate people by being ever more right wing; we need to bring everyone along if we want to see these nutjobs consigned to history.
“…and encourage utilities to push forward with their original plans for a whole new fleet of dirty coal stations in the UK (the first to be built here for 30 years).”
More power to you! 🙂
Eh, I know the headline comes from the Guardian, but it should be “England & Wales puts decarbonisation on hold” – sadly our Scottish politicians are hell bent on carbon capture technology, regardless of how expensive, in-efficient and totally unproven it is. Not to mention how insignificant the emissions saved would be (even if it worked), compared with how much CO2 China will be putting out in the next few years. Got to be seen to be green though. Slight change of subject but I came across this today – the Scottish Government’s official AGW curriculum / propaganda for indoctrinating our school children with post modern science and downright dishonesty – http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/exploringclimatechange/index.asp Much of it could have been written by Greenpeace or WWF.
Phillip Bratby says:
August 16, 2010 at 9:24 am
I agree. Let us hope that a strong whiff of reality is blowing through the new Government. A sensible mix of nuclear and coal would go a long way towards bringing sanity back to the UK’s energy policy.
That is the same David Cameron who a few years ago applied for permission to install a small wind turbine on top of his house in London (which would have supplied 60W, if I remember correctly). It’s a sort of a relief, in this case, to find out that he’s probably just another unprincipled politician rather than a CAGW ideologue. What this says about the state of British politics these days, well, that’s another issue.
I have left a space in my small outhouse containing my gas boiler for a diesel stand-by power generator in the certain expectation that within the next five years we would be on a three day week for electricity here in Scotland. Maybe -just maybe – I may not now need supplementary power generation if the politicians are now slowly beginning to see sense. There have been plenty of warnings that Britain would run out of power if the current energy policies were pursued and EU rules were adhered to.
When green eyed fantasy meets cold reality, in the words of that old song, something’s gotta give. In this case, green fantasy. Still, die hard enviro’s still have something to celebrate – the Carbon Reduction Comittment is not being shelved, and the September deadline for 30,000 organisations to register to be skinned alive, is fast approaching. Analysts believe that only about 1,700 will meet the deadline with the rest being shocked to receive official reminder letters from Defra. Pass the popcorn please!
Like Des I just hope it is true and that they keep backing away from the AGW hype.
. . . and so it begins, reality trumping the greenie dreams in fairies, unicorns and the utopian no energy future.
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They probably started getting weighty reports similar to this, dumped on their ministerial desks.
Windpower, hopeless (and in ‘windy’ Scotland too):
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/news/Windfarms-only-giving-half-power.6426015.jp
This is the problem with our ‘changing’ weather patterns. The jetstreams all went south this winter, which gave us a very cold winter. That cold winter was a by-product of the resulting anticyclones that set themselves up over Europe, for weeks on end.
But guess what – windelecs (wind turbines) don’t work in anticyclones.
This is the difference between being in opposition, and being in government. Its all very well being holier than thou on Green issues in opposition, but as the governing party(s) they now realise that if the lights start going out across the nation, they will be out of office quicker than weasel sh*t off a shovel.
Time to ditch the pipe-dream windelecs, and to invest instead in something that works – reliably.
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