Brussels (Platts)--5Mar2009

A cross-party group of 44 European Parliament members is pushing for
proposals for emission limits for large combustion plant to be included in the
report on a new EU industrial emissions law that the EP is due to vote on on
March 12, environment group E3G's Mark Johnston told Platts Thursday.

The group is proposing that all power plant with more than 500 MW thermal
input permitted after the law takes effect comply with an emissions limit of
350gCO2/kWh from 2020, and that all existing similar-sized power plant comply
with the same limit from 2025.

"The 500-MW thermal rating would translate into about 210 MW power
capacity for coal plant and about 260 MW power capacity for combined cycle gas
turbine plant," said Johnston.

The group has also proposed that the European Commission review these
provisions by June 30, 2014, and consider lowering the emissions limit to
150gCO2/kWh, bringing forward the 2025 deadline and widening the scope beyond
the power sector.

"A 350gCO2/kWh limit rules out new coal unless fitted with carbon capture
and storage," Johnston told a meeting in the EP on Tuesday. "The tighter limit
of 150gCO2/kWh would mean only gas and coal plant with 90% CCS would be
allowed." The 500-MW thermal threshold would mean that the emission limits
would apply to about 500 power plant in the EU today, said Johnston.

A similar proposal was thrown out of the report adopted on the new
emissions law by the EP's environment committee on January 22 by the
committee's chairman "on a procedural technicality" without a vote, said
Johnston.

The same procedural issue, centered on whether including CO2 extends the
scope of the original laws, could see the latest proposals thrown out again
before the EP votes on the committee's report, he said.

The new EU industrial emissions law is to replace the EU's integrated
pollution prevention and control directive, which sets limits on pollutants
(excluding CO2) and the EU's large combustion plant directive, which applies
to all power stations over 50 MW, as well as oil refineries, coke ovens and
coal gasification and liquefaction plants.

Coal lobby group Eurocoal's secretary general Thorsten Diercks told the
EP meeting that the EP had twice rejected power plant emission limits in the
last year--once as part of the EU's third energy market opening package and
again as part of the EU's climate protection package.

Diercks argued that mandatory emission limits should only be considered
once CCS had been proven commercially.

"Meanwhile it must be possible to build capture-ready plant--that will
knock out half or two-thirds of the new coal plant planned in the EU," he
said. "We won't be locked in because [CCS] will be retrofitted. If in 2016 or
2017 we see that CCS is possible, then we could have an obligation for it
after that."