Britannia Radio

Things may be stirring a bit in the right direction here.  The third 
piece by Richard North is salutary but "methinks he doth protest too 
much" to some extent.   It is my belief that we cannot afford to have 
all our eggs in one basket anf therefore 'clean coal' technology is 
worth pursuing especially if we pay for it by stopping the rip-off 
windfarms!

After all regardless of the 'Warmist" views pollution in itself is 
not to be ignored.  And in any case coal is coal and if this gets it 
dug out of the ground I'm all for it.  In the short term it might be 
Russian coal while make the preparations to start digging here.  
Nuclear ios clearly the vital one and North is spot on there.

xxxxxxxxxxx cs
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CONSERVATIVEHOME Blog 10.9.08
  Britain is "uniquely equipped" to take advantage of clean coal
Alan Duncan

One of the big arguments of the climate change lobby is that 
environmental and energy security concerns lead us to the same 
conclusions.  Nigel Lawson took issue with this recently in an 
exchange of views with Oliver Letwin.  He noted that many countries 
(including Britain) have plentiful supplies of coal and those nations 
include our closest friends, Australia and Canada.  Using coal 
addresses many of our energy security worries but coal is, of course, 
unacceptable to the environmentalists.

Anti-coal views haven't stopped fifty new coal-fired power plants 
being commissioned across Europe.  Italy, in particular, is planning 
a rapid increase in its use of coal.  Arthur Scargill popped up 
recently to make the case for coal versus nuclear.  It's a false 
choice.  Nuclear power plants should be part of our energy mix.  John 
McCain agrees and so, more surprisingly, does Angela Merkel.  
Germany's Chancellor wants to stop the closure of Germany's nuclear 
power stations - a policy adopted by Gerhard Schroeder's Green-SDP 
administration.

The key question is whether coal can be clean or clean enough.  This 
morning's Times reports on German efforts to develop clean coal 
technologies.  It also notes the enormous commercial rewards for the 
corporates or nations that develop these technologies first.  A 
leader in The Times concludes: "The race for clean coal is on. The 
British need to catch up."

Alan Duncan comments:
"The Germans and the Swedes are to be congratulated on this 
experiment but it's a depressing indication of how we have ceded 
international leadership on this critical technology.

"You cannot get a starker demonstration of the poverty of Labour's 
thought on energy policy than their handling of carbon capture and 
storage. Not only did their dithering frighten away a joint CCS 
experiment at Peterhead between BP and Scottish & Southern, but now 
their confusion has led E.On to postpone their decision on a new 
supercritical coal plant at Kingsnorth.

The Government's attitude has set back our ability to deploy this 
technology by as much as a decade and, as elsewhere, is making 
Britain an increasingly unattractive place to invest."

"The fact is that Britain is a country that is almost uniquely 
equipped to take advantage of CCS technology. The North Sea is the 
ideal repository for carbon emissions, we have a healthy 
manufacturing sector and an energy industry that is (for the moment 
at least) ready to make major investments in Britain. With China and 
India leading a world revival in coal burning, CCS is not only an 
enormous economic opportunity for the UK, but also an environmental 
necessity.  This is why we have pledged to fund a minimum of three 
CCS plants here in the UK. That's the sort of policy ambition that UK 
plc needs to secure competitive advantage in the new energy economy."
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THE TIMES - Leader    10.9.08
Fired up over CCS
A German coal experiment should put UK ministers on their mettle

A small experiment in an unlikely place, launched today, could prove 
momentous. In Spremberg, a German coalmining town, the Swedish power 
company Vattenfall is building a pilot plant to clean up the filthy 
process of making electricity from coal - and hence tackle the 
looming threat of climate change.

Coal is centre stage in the climate change debate because it is 
cheap, plentiful and dirty. Burning coal to make electricity produces 
almost three times as many climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions 
as burning gas. Given that the world is set to burn a great deal of 
coal in the next 20 years, half of it in India and China, it is vital 
to clean up the coal act.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in principle extracts 
carbon emissions from coal and pumps them underground. In practice, 
this has not yet been proven from power stations at scale. Nor, 
crucially, is it clear enough how much it might cost. The pilot in 
Spremberg will advance knowledge on both fronts, and spawn larger 
demonstration projects.

The Germans and Swedes have stolen a march on Britain. UK ministers 
have launched a competition for a CCS pilot scheme, but nothing has 
yet been built, and they have simultaneously appeared willing to give 
the green light to new coal-fired power stations without the 
technology. Utilities in Britain have been waiting around for 
subsidy, while Vattenfall is putting its own money into the project. 
It could reap enormous commercial rewards, not least from China, 
which is sitting on enormous coal reserves.

The race for clean coal is on. The British need to catch up.
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EUREFERENDUM Blog   10.9.08
Knee-jerk politics

"A frisson of excitement" would be something of an exaggeration, but 
it is fair to say that a certain amount of interest has been 
generated by the news of the commissioning of a new, experimental 
carbon capture plant in eastern Germany.

As reported by Deutsche Welle, the Swedish energy utility Vattenfall 
has invested ?70 million in the plant to service a 30 MW lignite-
burning power station at Schwarze Pumpe in the Lausitz region of 
eastern Germany.

The carbon dioxide emitted, at a rate of nine tons per hour, will be 
compressed and pumped into deep, porous rock in a gas field in 
northern Germany. The process is considered economically viable 
because the emissions can be offset against the costs of having to 
buy carbon permits under the EU's emissions trading scheme (ETS).

No figures are given for increased fuel consumption, although the 
German conservation group BUND argues that the process carries a 10 
percent penalty. Other sources suggest up to 25 percent fuel 
increases with as much as a 60 percent hike in operating costs 
compared with conventional coal-fired generation.

This unit is very much a pilot and Vattenfall now plans to build two 
"demonstration plants" 10 times that size in Germany and Denmark by 
2015. It then aims to commission its first "large-scale CCS power 
station" in 2020.

However, no estimate is given for the cost of a full-scale plant 
although it is likely to be expensive. The best UK comparison we have 
is the abortive Peterhead scheme which was set to cost £500 million 
to service a 350 MW gas-fired plant.

This effectively doubles the capital cost of a generating plant which 
with the additional fuel and operating costs - offset only by the 
"snake oil" ETS certificates - makes it something of a bad deal, even 
ignoring the utter fatuity of attempting to reduce carbon dioxide 
emissions in the pursuit of limiting "climate change".

Despite all this, there might be some sense in Germany adopting the 
technology if it enables generators to continue using stocks of 
highly polluting but cheap lignite, staving off the day when it has 
to import all its coal stocks and perilously increasing its energy 
dependency.

For Britain though, there is no sense at all in carbon capture. Apart 
from the massively increased costs, the additional fuel consumption 
increases our dependence on imported coal supplies. With 22 million 
of the 52 million tons of coal we use for electricity generation 
imported from Russia, the very last thing we want to do is add to 
that for no gain in supply capacity.

With all that, one would have thought that a future Conservative 
government might be somewhat less than enthusiastic about the idea. 
But, if the comments of Tory energy spokesman Alan Duncan are any 
guide, the reverse is the case.

As retailed by Conservative Home [- - - - - see full report above -cs]
Thus it seems, the Conservative Party has become infected with the 
enthusiasm of europhile greenie MP Tim Yeo, and we are committed to 
this madness regardless of cost - MPs receiving a handsome 
contribution towards their electricity bills from the taxpayer.

But, if Duncan really wants an export opportunity on the back of 
emission-free electricity production, he should be looking at 
reactivating our nuclear industry, and in particular pebble bed 
technology. Already, South Africa is edging closer to building a 
commercial scale unit in Koeberg near Cape Town, with the signing of 
a $242 million construction contract last month.

The go-ahead has been given for fuel production and talks are being 
held on developing the system for producing synthetic fuels.

We know also that China is at an advanced stage in developing pebble 
bed technology, France is pursuing the system and the United States 
is taking an increasing interest. The US Idaho National Laboratory is 
working on its own version of the design.

A particular advantage of the system seems to be its ability to 
provide high-temperature heat (up to 950°C), which can be used for a 
range of industrial uses such as fertiliser production, shale-oil 
recovery and coal-to-liquids, as well as hydrogen and electricity 
production.

With such dynamism elsewhere in the world, the failure of our current 
government to get to grips with the technology is bad enough. 
Nevertheless, we have come to expect nothing better from this tired 
and failed administration.

But, when the knee-jerk Conservatives seem enthused only by useless, 
dead-end technology like carbon capture and have singularly failed to 
address the nuclear challenge, it seems that there can be no optimism 
at all that our growing (but entirely unnecessary) energy crisis is 
going to be resolved.

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Posted by Richard North