[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Coal Scuttled

[Bill Totten]

The climate camp outside the Kingsnorth power station is contesting the
biggest issue of them all.

by George Monbiot

Published in the Guardian 5th August 05 2008


As soon as I have finished this column I will jump on the train to Kent.
Last year Al Gore remarked "I can't understand why there aren't rings of
young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing
coal-fired power plants" {1}. Like hundreds of honorary young people, I
am casting my Zimmer frame aside to answer the call.

Everything now hinges on stopping coal. Whether we prevent runaway
climate change largely depends on whether we keep using the most
carbon-intensive fossil fuel. Unless we either leave it in the ground or
leave the carbon dioxide it produces in the ground, human development
will start spiralling backwards. The more coal is burnt, the smaller are
our chances of future comfort and prosperity. The industrial revolution
has gone into reverse.

It is not because of polar bears that I will be joining the climate camp
outside the coal plant at Kingsnorth. It is not because of butterflies
or frogs or penguins or rainforests, much as I love them all. It is
because everything I have fought for and that all campaigners for social
justice have ever fought for - food, clean water, shelter, security - is
jeopardised by climate change. Those who claim to identify a conflict
between environmentalism and humanitarianism have either failed to read
the science or have refused to understand it.

Our government could lead the world in one of two directions. Roughly
one third of our power stations will come to the end of their lives by
2020. It could replace them with low-carbon plants or it could repeat -
this time in full knowledge of the consequences - the disastrous
decisions of the past. E.on's application to build a new coal-burning
power station at Kingsnorth is the first for many years. At least five
other such proposals hang on the outcome {2}. Between them they would
account for 54 million tonnes of carbon emissions a year {3}: as much as
the entire economy would produce if the UK, in line with current
science, were to cut its emissions by ninety per cent {4}.

The government seems determined to make the wrong decision. It has
inherited the party's traditional love for coal, but, being New Labour,
now supports the bosses not the workers, and has colluded with them to
make the case for a new generation of power stations. It has one
justification for this policy: that one day dirty coal will be
transformed into clean coal by means of carbon capture and storage
(CCS). All that is needed to effect this transformation is a sprinkling
of alchemical dust, in the form of the future price of carbon. The
market, it claims, will automatically ensure that coal plants bury their
carbon dioxide, as this will be cheaper than buying pollution permits.

Last month the House of Commons environmental audit committee examined
this proposition and found that it was nonsense {5}. It cited studies by
the UK Energy Research Centre and Climate Change Capital which estimate
that capturing carbon emissions from existing coal plants will cost
seventy to one-hundred or ninety to 155 euros per tonne of carbon
dioxide. Yet the government predicts that the likely price of carbon
between 2013 to 2020 will be around 39 euros per tonne. Even E.on
believes that it won't rise above fifty euros. "The gap between the
carbon price and the cost of CCS", the committee finds, "is enormous".
The energy minister, Malcolm Wicks, confessed to the MPs "I hope that
the strengthening of carbon markets ... will bring forward a
sufficiently good price for carbon that it will provide some of the
financial incentive for CCS. Will it be enough? I do not know."

This is the sum of government policy: to cross its fingers and hope the
market delivers. If it approves a new coal plant at Kingsnorth, it will
do so on the grounds that the power station will be "CCS-ready".
CCS-ready seems to mean nothing more than this: that there's enough
space on the site for a carbon capture plant, should the developer deign
one day to build it. The committee warns that this meaningless promise
could be used "as a fig leaf to give unabated coal-fired power stations
an appearance of environmental acceptability" {6}.

The government has already shown us what it wants to do. In January,
Gary Mohammed, a civil servant at the business department, emailed E.on
to ask whether he should include CCS as a condition for approving its
new coal plant. (This gives a fascinating insight into how government
works: companies are asked to write their own rules). E.on replied that
the government "has no right to withhold approval for conventional
plant". Six minutes later Mr Mohammed answered thus: "Thanks. I won't
include. Hope to get the set of draft conditions out today or tomorrow". {7}

There is a simple means by which the government could ensure that our
future electricity supplies would not commit the UK to stoking runaway
climate change. It would do as California has done, and set, by a
certain date, a maximum level for carbon pollution per megawatt-hour of
electricity production. This would have to be a low one: perhaps eighty
kilograms of carbon dioxide. Then, in line with the government's
precious principles (or absence thereof), it could leave the rest to the
market. I have now reached the point at which I no longer care whether
or not the answer is nuclear. Let it happen, as long as its total
emissions are taken into account, we know exactly how and where the
waste is to be buried, how much this will cost and who will pay, and
there is a legal guarantee that no civil nuclear materials will be used
by the military. We can no longer afford any rigid principle but one:
that the harm done to people living now and in the future must be
minimised by the most effective means, whatever they might be.

But I believe the likely response would be more interesting than this.
Several recent studies have shown how, through maximising the diversity
of renewable generators and by spreading them as far apart as possible,
by using new techniques for balancing demand with supply and clever
schemes for storing energy, between eighty and one-hundred per cent of
our electricity could be produced by renewables, without any loss in the
reliability of power supplies {8, 9, 10}. Unlike CCS, wind, wave, tidal,
solar, hydro and geothermal power are proven technologies. Unlike
nuclear power, they can be safely decommissioned as soon as they become
redundant.

A policy like this requires both courage and vision. So look at the
current cabinet - Brown, Straw, Darling, Hutton, Blears, Kelly, Hoon -
and weep. Every man and woman with backbone was purged from this
government years ago, leaving those who know how to appease the
interests that might threaten them. These people won't stand up to
business, even when the future prospects of mankind are at stake.

If fear is the only thing that moves them, we must present them with a
greater threat than the companies planning new coal plants. We must show
that this issue has become a political flashpoint; that the public
revulsion towards new coal could help to eject them from office. You
could do no better than joining us at Kingsnorth this week.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Quoted by Nicholas Kristof, 16th August 2007. The Big Melt. New York
Times.

2. Longannet & Cockenzie (Scottish Power); Ferrybridge (Scottish and
Southern Energy); Fiddler's Ferry (Scottish and Southern Energy);
Tilbury (RWE npower); Blyth (RWE npower).

3. Greenpeace makes this calculation as follows: "10.6 GW (the
generation capacity of the six plants) x 7884 hours of generation per
year, assuming 90% operational = 83.57 TWH/y. 83.57 TWH/y x 0.65 = 54
mt/CO2/y". See footnote 23:
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmenvaud/654/654we13.htm

4. The provisional government estimate for the UK's CO2 emissions in
2007 is 543.7 million tonnes. Defra, July 2008. UK Climate Change
Programme. Annual Report to Parliament, July 2008, p9.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/ukccp/pdf/ukccp-ann-report-july08.pdf

5. House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, 22nd July 2008 .
Carbon capture and
storage. Ninth Report of Session 2007–08.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmenvaud/654/654.pdf

6. ibid.

7. You can open the emails on this page:
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/press-releases/government-climate-policy-dictated-by-german-utility-giant-20080131

8. German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Technical Thermodynamics
Section Systems Analysis and Technology Assessment, June 2006.
Trans-Mediterranean Interconnection for Concentrating Solar Power.
Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear
Safety, Germany.
http://www.dlr.de/tt/Portaldata/41/Resources/dokumente/institut/system/projects/TRANS-CSP_Full_Report_Final.pdf

9. Mark Barrett, April 2006. A Renewable Electricity System for the UK:
A Response to the 2006 Energy Review. UCL Bartlett School Of Graduate
Studies - Complex Built Environment Systems Group.
http://www.cbes.ucl.ac.uk/projects/energyreview/Bartlett%20Response%20to%20Energy%20Review%20-%20electricity.pdf

10. Centre for Alternative Technology, 10th July 2007.
ZeroCarbonBritain: an alternative energy strategy. This will be made
available at www.zerocarbonbritain.com.

Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/08/05/coal-scuttled/


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