Coal expansion plans condemned

01/05/2009

Scottish campaigners want moratorium on new power stations

Plans for a “dirty” coal-fired station at Hunterston in Ayrshire have been slammed by campaigners, after a recent announcement by the UK Government to block similar proposals south of the border.

Last week, UK Energy Minister Ed Miliband announced that no new coal-fired power station in England and Wales will get government consent without equipment to capture and bury at least 25 per cent of its emissions on being built, and 90 per cent by 2025.

Now environmentalists and residents are outraged about plans for an old-fashioned 1600MW coal plant at Hunterston (with a 500ft smokestack) because there is no immediate commitment to use “clean” carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

Scottish campaigners are insisting the Scottish Government follows Miliband’s lead before any coal power station is given the go-ahead. Although the £1.5bn joint proposal by Peel Energy (sister company to Clydeport, which operates Hunterston port) and Danish state-owned energy firm Dong includes “capture readiness”, Friends of the Earth (FoE) Scotland said the concept is a “dangerous smokescreen, which requires little more than that land be set aside for the kit to be added at a later date”.

Corinne Evans, head of campaigns for FoE, added: “It’s really important that we don’t allow new coal power stations like Hunterston, whether it’s bog standard or capture-ready, because it’s essentially the same thing.

“If the Scottish Government were to approve a so-called capture-ready plant, they’d be lagging behind on climate change, so we would like them to clarify their position after Ed Miliband’s announcement.” 

Liz Murray, head of campaigns in Scotland for the World Development Movement, said the Scottish Government could set the agenda with an “emissions performance target” of 350 grams of C02 per kWh for coal power, which would place a moratorium on “new developments that didn’t have fully-operational CCS”.

Salmond is expected to announce the results of his administration’s technical research into carbon storage in the North Sea later this week. A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: “We haven’t decided whether we’ll go down the road of the UK Government.”

He explained a recent consultation had considered what kind of guidelines could be set for coal-power applications. “We looked at the requirement that new power stations over 300MW should be able to incorporate carbon capture technology in the future. The final version of the guidance will be available later this year,” he said.

Those living near Hunterston, which already has two nuclear plants, are unhappy at the idea that CO2 pollution would be allowed to billow from a 500ft chimney. Steven Graham, chairman of Fairlie Community Council, said a survey of residents in the region found four-to-one being against the proposed coal station.

“Understandably, people are concerned they’ll be living so close to such a potentially major polluter,” he said. “It’s an industrial plant without any guarantee the clean-coal technology will ever work. The CCS has to be built into the thing at the beginning – it’ll never be upgraded unless the company is made to.”
 
Since CCS technology has never been proven on a large scale, Miliband also announced plans for four smaller 300 to 400MW demonstration projects, each costing £1bn. One is expected to be at the existing coal station in Longannet in the Firth of Forth, but the Hunterston developers also still hope to win approval for a demo facility.

A spokeswomen for RWE npower, the company with a 75 per cent stake in Peel Energy, said: “There’s a heck of a lot of information [from Miliband’s announcement] to digest and consult upon before we can comment.”