The World Wide Fund for Nature, once upon a time known and World Wildlife Fund, the world's biggest environmental charity has recently called for a moratorium on new coal-fired power stations in the UK until carbon capture and storage technology has been shown to work and can be installed from the outset.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the process of trapping a power station's emissions at source and pumping it into suitable underground sites - often the empty spaces left by drilling oil.
CCS can, however, only be seen as a stop-gap solution in the transition to clean energy generation but as yet no large-scale demonstration projects have come to fruition.
In the UK, the government has said that all new coal-fired power stations must be 'carbon capture ready', or suitable for the retro-fitting of the technology at a future date, which effectively means very little.
"Currently, claims of CCS readiness do little more than refer to the need for power plants to leave space on the site for CCS equipment to be retrofitted in the future," said Keith Allott, head of WWF-UK's climate change programme.
"There's no deadline for conversion to full scale CCS, let alone any guarantee that this would then be met. Reliance on an as yet unproven technology, however promising it may be, is a risky business - the future of the planet's climate cannot rely upon good intentions.
"To avoid dangerous climate change, there needs to be a rapid decarbonisation of the power sector and a radical shift in the way in which the UK and indeed the world sources its energy.
"Renewables and greater energy efficiency should form the bulk of that shift, but fossil fuels using proven and strongly legislated CCS could also play a role."
The charity has commissioned researchers at Edinburgh University to explore what 'capture ready' actually means and how best to ensure that readiness translates into action on CCS.
The findings are detailed in a WWF report, Evading Capture.
WWF is calling for the introduction of an emissions standard similar to that already in force in California, which will set legal limits on the amount of CO2 that new and replacement power stations can emit.
While no one seems to talk about it there should be a way, and I am sure that there is, one that would not even involve that mush effort, to make the burning of coal in power station a much cleaner effort. Scrubbers could, for starters, be employed with which to remove the sulfur and other elements. This is already being done in other countries. So if it can work there then it should be able to work here assuming the political will is there.
In addition to that why do we have to use coal anyway in such power stations? There should be, once again with the right political will, for a large number of years at least, enough wood to burn in such station if we would be just prepared to do a “Dutch Elm Disease eradication program”. Such a program would yield lots of seasoned elm wood for such stations, a very clean burning wood of very great heat value.
This, as a stop-gab, during which time cleaner energy still could be looked at, developed and put on stream.
We also, and this is most important, get away pronto from the large electricity generating power stations in this country currently and get over to power generating at a much more local level and that for more than one reason. The studies and suggestions from the book “Small is Beautiful” by Fritz Schumacher should be a guide in this. The floods of 2007 and the fact that those came close to shutting down power for hundreds of thousands should be a reminder of the fact that large power stations are a disaster waiting to happen.
And local electricity generation then gives the chance for clean energy generation at a local level, whether by CHP units, fuelled by wood chips, straw, methane, etc. or by wind, solar and water; all can be used.
Due to the fact that local power generation does not require the long overland lines the power generated can be of a much, much lower AC voltage than what must, by needs, be the kind from the huge power plants.
We must, in everything, and this includes heat and power, think local rather than regional or bigger even. Tine we cut things down to size again.
M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
WWF wades in onto carbon capture debate
