UK government urged to extend carbon capture programme

The UK government should extend its programme to develop technology that will trap carbon emissions from coal-fired plants to include gas power stations, it was urged yesterday.

The Committee on Climate Change said efforts to tackle global warming required reducing emissions from electricity generation to almost zero by 2030, which should rule out new conventional gas-fired power stations after 2020.

It recommended the carbon capture and storage demonstration scheme (CCS), brought in by the previous government to fit up to four new coal power stations with the technology to slash emissions from fossil fuels, should include gas as well.

The committee, set up to advise the Government on tackling global warming, said ministers should consider funding at least one gas-fired plant fitted with the technology.

Carbon capture and storage has not been developed at scale, but there are hopes the technology could slash emissions from power stations by up to 90 per cent, by catching the carbon dioxide created by burning fossil fuels and storing it permanently underground.

Two potential schemes are competing for funding, potentially of more than £1 billion, to build the first new plant with the technology fitted on part of its output - at Longannet, Scotland and Kingsnorth, Kent.

The Government is expected to launch a second competition for another three plants in the coming months, with funding raised by a levy on fossil fuels which will be passed on to consumers in energy bills.

A letter from the committee's chairman Lord Turner urged the Government to consider funding a gas-fired CCS plant as it could potentially be competitive with other forms of low-carbon energy and because little is being done internationally to develop the technology for gas.

And the committee said there was a need to decarbonise the UK's electricity sector by 2030 as part of efforts to cut massively the country's greenhouse gas emissions - with very little scope for conventional new gas-fired plants beyond 2020 as a result.

The Energy Department should consider extending planned emissions performance standards - which would limit the amount of emissions a power station could produce and effectively rule out polluting coal plants without CCS - to include new gas power after 2020.

The committee's chief executive officer David Kennedy said: "In order to meet our climate change targets, we need to invest in low-carbon power generation.

"New conventional gas generation is required to maintain security of supply over the next 10 years.

"Beyond that, further investment in conventional gas would conflict with required decarbonisation of the power sector by 2030."