Acid News, No 3, Oct 2008
Coal industry fighting for survival
A directive that is intended to encourage carbon capture and storage is making its way through the EU approval process. There are clear problems with this technology however.
By employing carbon capture and storage (CCS) we can continue to use fossil fuels and at the same time greatly reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The solution is close, it is just a matter of getting some pilot projects running, and coal power plants equipped with CCS technology will become a viable, commercial mitigation option.
This frequently painted picture sounds almost too good to be true, and that is probably the case. A new report1 takes a look behind the bright vision of CCS given by proponents of this technology.
Technology is not CO2-free
In comparison with conventional coal power plants, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions can be reduced significantly by using capture technologies (despite the fact that the process itself reduces plant efficiency by around 10 percentage points). While CO2 emitted directly at the power stations is reduced by 88 per cent, a life cycle assessment shows substantially lower overall reductions in greenhouse gases, ranging from 65 to 79 per cent. This translates into CO2 emissions of up to 274 g CO2-eq/kWh.
Funds could be used more effectively
CCS entails high costs and risks of future leakage. Failing to combat climate change would be even more costly, but this would only be an argument if no other solutions were at hand. But there are – renewable energies in combination with efficiency improvements and reduced energy demand have been shown to be environmentally safe and sound technologies.
The costs of these solutions cannot be compared with traditional coal-fired power plants – they have to be compared with CCS equipped plants.
The “capture-ready” swindle
Many of the coal-fired power plants under planning or construction are so-called capture-ready. “Capture-ready” suggests that coal power plants will be retrofitted. Nobody knows at which point in time this will be the case, if at all. The key factor for CCS is whether or not commercial capture options will be available for coal-fired power plants and at what cost. The simplest way to avoid misuse of the “capture-ready” concept is to say no to all new coal power plants without real, working CCS.
Last gasp of the coal industry
The proponents of CCS are mainly the coal industry and governments of countries that have a lot of coal and coal-fired power plants, as well as some oil and gas nations.
Coal power is the worst method of producing electricity from the climate perspective. A serious climate policy would hit the coal industry and coal-dominated power industry very hard. However, the power industry is well organized and power suppliers are pinning their hopes on CCS, or perhaps more precisely, they hope that enthusiasm for CCS will win them time to continue extracting and using coal.
Per Elvingson
1Last gasp of the coal industry. By Gabriela von Goerne and Fredrik Lundberg, published by the Air Pollution & Climate Secretariat.