CARBON CAPTURE IN EUROPE

Worth emphasizing: “If you haven’t got a coal strategy, you haven’t got a climate strategy.”...British official

All new EU coal plants face carbon capture
Ed Crooks and George Parker, March 4, 2007 (UK Financial Times)

- All coal-fired power stations built in the European Union after 2020 could be forced to capture their carbon dioxide emissions under proposals that EU leaders are likely to adopt….
- A senior British official, speaking anonymously, said the wording of the commitment to be made on March 8-9 had not been agreed but he was “confident” that European leaders would move towards a 2020 target for carbon capture and storage for all new plants.
- The commitment is likely to be extended to gas-fired power plants, to avoid distorting fuel choice. That would mean the entire EU electricity industry would switch to low-carbon generation.

- But the technology to separate CO2 and store it beneath the sea bed or in underground caverns has not yet been shown to work on a commercial scale and is expensive. The summit is expected to commit members to about 12 large-scale pilot projects across the EU, to be operational by 2015…
- Also included in that strategy are controversial proposals for breaking up the EU’s large integrated electricity and gas companies…
- The UK government has billed the summit “one of the most important in recent years”. Tony Blair, the prime minister, hopes it will confirm Europe’s position as a world leader…
- Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor and host of the summit, is putting heavy pressure on leaders to…[commit] to a binding target that renewables will provide 20 per cent of the EU’s energy by 2020…
- Coal-fired power generation has become a focus of efforts to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. The world’s reserves of coal will last much longer at current consumption rates than those of oil or natural gas. Burning coal creates higher CO2 emissions than burning gas.
- The British official said: “If you haven’t got a coal strategy, you haven’t got a climate strategy.”