Britain May Have Missed Its Chance for Clean Coal

Britain May Have Missed Its Chance for Clean Coal

May 25 - Independent, The; London (UK)

By David Prosser Deputy

Britain could be on the verge of missing a huge opportunity to export clean coal technology around the world, energy analysts said yesterday.

They warned that BP's decision to abandon plans for the development of a "green" power plant at Peterhead, Scotland, following this week's Government white paper on energy, could be the start of a slowdown in British efforts to tackle climate change. Stuart Haszeldine, an Edinburgh University geoscientist, said: "The Government says it wants to lead a carbon capture and storage project. Well, it had a lead. Now it has a lead in hot air."

The warning follows comments from Richard Budge, the chief executive officer of Powerfuel, which is now installing clean coal technology at the newly-reopened Hatfield colliery. Mr Budge said energy producers are not likely to follow his company without a much clearer position on financial incentives from the Government. "New power station development of this type, without a change in Government policy, will be the exception," he said.

In addition to the Hatfield project, there are currently just four ongoing clean coal technology developments in the UK, now that BP has withdrawn its plans.

Of these, three incorporate carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems. This is the technology - also described as carbon capture and sequestration - that many politicians and environmentalists regard as their biggest weapon against climate change. It is the only solution that allows energy producers to go on burning fossil fuels while substantially reducing emissions.

The fourth project is RWE's plan for a supercritical plant at Tilbury in Essex, which is currently at feasibility stage. The plant would operate at much higher temperatures than conventional plants, producing greater efficiency and therefore requiring less fuel. The same amount of power would then be produced with fewer emissions, but there would still be major carbon dioxide output.

CCS, however, could in theory eliminate 90 per cent of energy producers' contributions to climate change. The technology is based on the principle that while all fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide when burnt, if the gas could be captured before it reached the atmosphere and then stored out of harm's way, there would be no additional climate change effect.

The most obvious place for energy companies to store carbon dioxide is in the reserves under the ground - particularly under the seabed - from which the fossil fuels came in the first place. Such reserves don't leak; otherwise the fuel would not have formed in the first place.

Statoil, the Norwegian energy company, has already successfully stored carbon dioxide under the North Sea, but as yet no-one has built a working power plant that produces electricity, captures emissions, pipes them to a reservoir and stores them.

This is what Powerfuel and the other three UK projects - a Centrica development on Teeside, a Scottish & Southern Energy plant at Yorkshire, and E.ON's plans for Kingsnorth in Kent - are aiming for.

BP's withdrawal of similar plans for a Scottish plant was triggered by the delay in the launch of a Government competition to build such a plant. Ministers have promised public subsidies to the eventual winner of the contest. But there has been no specific allocation of funds. Power companies argue that without sufficient subsidies, the plants would be unable to compete with their dirtier rivals.

The cost of building green plants is likely to be even higher because question marks still remain over the technology of the carbon capture part of the system. The more basic option is to separate out the carbon dioxide after the fossil fuel has been burnt. But many experts think pre-combustion separation is a better option.

With this process, the starting fuel is burnt with oxygen and steam and the carbon dioxide syphoned off. The remaining gas, mainly hydrogen, is then burned in a gas turbine to produce power. This technology, known as gasification, has yet to be trialled on a commercial scale.

The industry's prize for the winners of the race to build a CCS- integrated plant is bigger than the unknown subsidies on offer from the Government. China alone has plans to build 600 coal-fired power plants over the next 20 years. One minister has said: "If China does not take up CCS, we are all done for."

Leaving aside the environmental rewards of a CCS solution, the financial benefits would be huge.

A spokesman for the Department of Trade & Industry said the Government believed Britain was on track to be the first country to build a fully green power plant, despite rival projects in Norway, Australia and California, which BP is involved in.

"We want to see a demonstration plant up and running between 2011 and 2013 and we think that would put us ahead of other countries," he said.

How carbon sequestration works

The design for the Carson Hydrogen plant in southern California is expected to be completed by the end of this year, and to open in 2011

1: Petroleum coke, a by-product of the refinery process, is heated at high temperature and pressure, turning it into gas, which is cleaned of substances of sulphur

2: The gas is separated into hydrogen and carbon dioxide

3: The CO2 is piped into nearly depleted oilfields, where it is used to flush out the remaining oil that is hard to extract otherwise. About 4 million tonnes of C02 a year could be captured and stored permanently in the reservoirs

4: The hydrogen is burned in a gas turbine, producing 500MW of low-carbon electricity, enough to power 325,000 homes in southern California. The main byproduct is water