News

April 26, 2009

The Week In Alternative Power: Plenty Of Action In Coal And Carbon Capture, While Commodities Also Showed Some Strength

By Sally White

Coal got a boost in the UK last week. The government announced plans for a new generation of coal-fired power stations, with the proviso that they must capture and bury at least 25 per cent of greenhouse gases immediately, and 100 per cent by 2025. Energy and Climate Change Secretary David Milliband told the House of Commons that, although coal was a “polluting fuel”, it was such a low cost and flexible source of power that it had to be a part of Britain’s energy mix.

The government will direct the building of four energy "clusters", which will generate a total of 2.5GW of electricity, on the east coast of Britain. Each cluster will have at least one major new coal-fired power station able to collect carbon emissions and transport them out to sea, where they will be buried in redundant oil or gas fields. The new power stations, the first to be built in over 30 years, are not expected to come on stream until 2015. The government envisages oil and...