Coal in the UK

Ecoal December 2009, Volume 69

At the beginning of November, the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) published a response document to its consultation on 'A Framework for the Development of Clean Coal'.

WCI was one of a number of organisations invited to respond to the initial consultation and submitted its comments in August. DECC's response, while not covering all areas of the initial consultation, does reconfirm two key aspects of the UK government's CCS policy:

• A new CCS incentive will fund up to four commercial-scale demonstration projects and all new coal-fired power plants will have to demonstrate the full CCS chain at a commercial scale.
• A long term plan will be developed for wider CCS deployment from 2020 onwards with all demonstration plants having retrofitted CCS to their full capacity by 2025. This plan will include a rolling review process which will consider a regulatory and financial framework, as well as developing a contingency plan for dealing with coal emissions should CCS not become technically or economically viable within the planned timeframe.

While DECC's commitment to a CCS demonstration programme is commendable, the decision to still only fund up to four commercial-scale projects is disappointing as it does not demonstrate the level of commitment required to support the proposed long term transition plan. The WCI's response to the initial consultation highlighted this language as an issue and recommended that the government should commit to four projects as a minimum.

UK Energy Bill

Later in November, the UK's new Energy Bill was outlined as part of the annual Queen's Speech to open Parliament. The Bill follows on from the Government's Low Carbon Transition Plan and outlines a strategy for reducing the UK's CO₂ emissions by 34% from 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% by 2050.

The Bill states that a levy on electricity suppliers will be used to help fund up to four CCS demonstration plants in the UK and potential retrofitting of these plants to their full capacity should they be required to capture 100% of CO₂ emissions under future legislation. This levy will provide the CCS incentive noted by DECC earlier in November. Although progress has been slow on the specifics of the levy, this announcement does begin the process for introducing it as law. CCS is the only technology specifically earmarked for funding under the Bill and is the main focus of the proposed legislation.

This is the final Queen's Speech before a general election, which must be held by 3 June 2010. This will give the Government approximately 15 weeks of Parliamentary time to ensure that any new bills are passed by both the House of Commons and House of Lords.

The full set of DECC post-consultation documents, along with collated responses to the consultation, can be downloaded from: www.decc.gov.uk