Inquiry launched into E.ON’s ‘carbon ready’ coal station plans

E.ON's plans put on the backburner during inquiry. Photo:Foto43

The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has announced the launch of a new inquiry into Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). The announcement follows WWF’s report earlier this week, ‘Evading Capture’, which said that as CCS has yet to be proven to work on a large scale basis, replacing or building new coal-fired power stations that are ‘carbon ready’ with an intention to retrofit CCS at a later, unspecified, date creates ‘unacceptable risks both to the climate and to the taxpayer.’

E.ON has applied for planning permission for a new power plant at Kingsnorth in Kent. If it goes ahead it will be the first new coal-fired power station in the UK for 30 years, and if built without CCS in place would cost £200 million a year in emissions damages. This development is the focus of the inquiry, and planning permission has been put on hold until the government has finished consultation on regulating CSS. The consultation will finish this year, so the decision will be made before trialling CCS on a large scale basis as the WWF findings recommend.

E.ON intends to develop commercial-scale CCS technology, but as Keith Allot, Head of Climate Change at WWF-UK, says: ‘There’s no deadline for conversion to full scale CCS. . .[and] the future of the planet’s climate cannot rely upon good intentions.’

WWF is asking the government to act to ensure that no new coal-fired stations are built in the UK, until CCS has been proven to work on a large scale and can be installed from the outset. CCS, a process for trapping CO2 and transporting it to underground geological sinks for storage, is being heralded by government and the power sector as the solution to the high levels of emissions these new coal-fired power stations would create. The EAC invites organisations and members of the public to present written submissions by 2 June 2008.