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The UK Government has approved the building of eight new coal-fired power stations, but only if they are fitted with ‘carbon capture and storage’ technology to significantly reduce their emissions. The energy and climate change secretary, Ed Milliband, characterised this as the right balance of three objectives: the need to protect the UK’s ‘energy security’, the need to develop low-carbon energy sources, and the need not to increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Ed.- The UK Government demonstrates yet again that its self-set carbon reduction targets are just words, no more than empty posing on the world stage of climate change.

Firstly, effective, large-scale commercial carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) does not yet exist, and may not exist by the equally meaningless 2020 UK Government deadline for its full installation on the new stations. By that time, if the predictions from the climate change scientists are even close, it will not help reduce the impact or duration of whatever part human activity is playing in climate change. The 2020 deadline, by the way, is optimistic to the point of deception. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts no half-decent CCS until 2050.

Secondly, as we reported in the Supplement to Green Health Watch Magazine 35, coal-fired power stations are unbelievably dirty. NASA climate scientist James Hansen has dubbed them “factories of death”. Even a station fitted with ‘perfect’ CCS reducing CO2 emissions by 72-90% and total greenhouse gas emissions by 65-79% will still be a filthy, global-warming process.*

Thirdly, barring a scientific breakthrough equivalent to that needed for affordable hydrogen-powered cars, energy generated by CCS-fitted stations will cost roughly twice as much as energy generated by stations without CCS.

Fourthly, the eight new coal-fired power stations will only increase ‘energy security’ if the coal they require can be sourced from within the UK. This would surely mean both opening mines closed during or just after the 1985 miners’ strike and accepting the use of more expensive coal. From 1980 to 2000, UK coal production reduced, and coal imports increased, year on year. Thereafter, from 2000 to 2006, coal imports increased sixfold. In 2005 two thirds of the coal burned by power stations had been imported.

Finally, it is worth noting that, unless they can be retrofitted with CCS, a third of all existing UK coal stations will be forced to close by 2020 under European pollution laws. Will these eight new stations scrape through without ‘perfect’ CCS technology? Or will they have to close as well, only a couple of years after being built? Another way of asking the same question is this. Given the uncertainty of CCS technology, the certainty of EU pollution laws, and the increased cost of generating electricity from coal, will any company take up the UK Government’s offer without, shall we say, certain (tax payer-funded) assurances?

* according to a study commissioned by the German federal government and carried out by researchers at the German Aerospace Centre in Stuttgart