Britain says yes to new coal-generated power plants

British Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said his country will continue to build new coal-generated power plants with an eye toward retrofitting those new coal plants with carbon capture and sequestration technology when those technologies are fully operational.

"I will not take a position which ignores our security of supply needs,” Miliband told the Financial Times. He also stressed the need to drive the technology into new plants "as quickly as we can.”

Secretary Miliband has the right idea here. In fact, we’ve stressed the same thing since the beginning.

America needs to continue to build new coal plants because new plants create a market for advanced clean coal technologies. And that means supporting additional funding for clean coal technology programs – especially carbon capture and storage projects.

We’re going to need all of our available energy resources – wind, solar, nuclear and coal – to meet future energy needs. We'll also need to continue to promote energy efficiency, but at the end of the day coal use will continue to grow both here at home and around the world in order to meet electricity needs. 

There has never been an environmental challenge facing the coal-based electricity sector for which technology has not provided the ultimate solution. In fact, today’s coal-generated power fleet is 77 percent cleaner than ever before, and we're moving forward with new technologies that can be used to retrofit new and existing coal plants to meet requirements to capture and safely store CO₂. 

Comments

[B Dubbs]

So, what they're saying is:
carbon capture=good
replacing coal=fine and
prematurely shutting of critical electricity fuel sources=bad. Sounds like a sound policy to me.

[Kelly Beninga]

Britain is renigging on their commitment to CO2 reduction, as demonstrated by building more dirty coal plants. "With an eye on CCS" is a joke. Retrofitting plants will be so expensive it will never happen. They are just giving lip service to it to try and appease those concerned about climate change.

[B T Dubbs]

My concern is that the statement of "77% cleaner"does NOT include carbon dioxide. Coal produces the MOST carbon dioxide of any energy source which is a definite concern for climate change when considering energy sources.

Another concern is the current status of carbon capture and storage technologies (CCS). From what I've heard these technologies are still in testing phase and are projected to be ready by 2020-2025. That would be another 15 years that these "clean coal" plants would emit CO2 into the atmosphere.

Finally, these coal technologies assume the low price of coal with stay a constant into the future. I hold a skeptic view of this considering: the U.S. has to import increasingly more coal to fulfill its energy needs and other developing nations specifically China are becoming large consumer of coal.

Just wanted to present more of the whole picture. Happy Holidays.

[Megan from ACCCE]

Thanks for your comments, everyone. I offer the following considerations:

1. CCS technologies are here. In fact, we recently detailed more than 80 CCS projects—most of them here in the U.S—proven to reduce CO2 emissions. Do we still have work to do? Absolutely. But it's important to understand that all of our nation's energy resources have challenges.

2. I'm also not sure where you've heard that we're importing more coal to meet our electricity needs, BT Dubbs. The U.S. has coal in spades—it's one of our most abundant energy sources. But you're right to highlight China's increasing use of coal, which is why developing advanced clean coal technologies here in the States is so important—it would allow us to export the technology to China and developing nations without emissions controls.

[Eric Snyder]

Megan, absolutely agree. We have the technology now! We will show the world this technology soon. Foreign nations will beat a path to our door.