Industry headlines

Chris Huhne has hit back at reports suggesting the government is watering down its commitment to phase out the UK's dirtiest power plants, insisting the government remains fully committed to banning new coal-fired power stations built without carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. Writing in a letter to the Guardian in response to yesterday's front page story claiming that the UK's dirtiest coal plants have won a government reprieve, the energy and climate change secretary said the "idea that we are watering down our commitment is simply incorrect". Click here for full story

The coalition is watering down a commitment to tough new environmental emissions standards, raising the possibility of dirty coal-fired power stations such as Kingsnorth going ahead. Green groups are aghast that a flagship policy called for in opposition by both Lib Dems and Tories, and which they last year tried to force on the Labour government, will now not be implemented in the coalition's first energy bill to be published this year. Click here for full story

“…… Across the world, coal is the dominant fuel and that’s not going to change soon. The biggest contributor to reducing carbon emissions on a global scale will not be renewables or nuclear, but coal-fired power stations fitted with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. Since coal is here to stay, we must decide how to generate low carbon electricity from it – and Scotland can lead this process by developing clean coal technologies. Installing CCS on new high-efficiency power stations will lead to lower carbon emissions than fitting it to older, less efficient facilities. The best result will be achieved by designing in CCS from the start rather than adding it to the end of an existing pipe.” Muir Miller, project director of Ayrshire Power. Click here for full story

[Scottish] Government-backed plans for a huge new coal-fired power plant are running into a rising tide of opposition from a powerful range of groups worried about pollution, ¬wildlife and tourism. The £3 billion scheme by Clydeport owner Peel Holdings to build Scotland’s first new fossil fuel power station for decades at Hunterston in North Ayrshire is facing thousands of objections from faith groups, international aid charities, wildlife agencies, ¬environmentalists and businesses…… “Allowing a new coal-fired station, without full carbon capture and ¬storage, at Hunterston would seriously undermine Scotland’s claim to be taking an international lead on cutting greenhouse gas emissions,” said Christian Aid Scotland’s Una Bartley.
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The CSIRO says the technology to capture carbon emissions from coal-fired power stations is at least a decade away from being commercially viable. The Federal Government has flagged plans to fit all new power coal power stations with post-combustion emissions capture and storage. Dr David Brockway says the CSIRO is trialing various methods at coal projects across Australia. Click here for full story

The UN is set to channel billions of pounds of public money from rich countries to giant energy companies to build 20 heavily polluting coal-fired power plants on the basis that they will emit less carbon dioxide than older ones. Data seen by the Guardian shows that 12 companies have applied to the UN for hundreds of millions of emission reduction credits to subsidise "efficient" coal-fired power stations in China and India. Many of the plants would be paid for with carbon offsets bought by British and European companies in lieu of cutting their own emissions. Click here for full story

Peterhead power station is to be developed as a testing ground for carbon capture and storage. Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) said the initiative would look at a number of options at the gas-fired station.SNP MP for Banff and Buchan, Dr Eilidh Whiteford, described the announcement as "excellent news" for Scotland's renewable sector.Plans for a different capture scheme at Peterhead were shelved by oil giant BP in 2007 after government delays Click here for full story

Province taking global lead on CCS technology
A lberta stands to reap the benefits of being a leader in carbon capture and storage technologies, which a renowned energy adviser group pegs as second only to energy efficiencies in reducing climate change.
Rising demand for electricity in developing nations is contributing to a steep increase in carbon emissions, a rise that could be addressed through low-carbon fuels combined with carbon capture and storage technologies, the International Energy Agency said in a report.
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Venture capital investment in cleantech in the second quarter totaled $2.02 billion across 140 companies in North America, Europe, China and India. A little down from the $2.04 billion invested in the first quarter, the total still reflects a 65 percent increase from the halfway mark last year, according to a report released today by the Cleantech Group and Deloitte.
The first quarter of 2010 saw a record number of cleantech deals: 192. So compared to that, the Q2 figures are a little lackluster, but still 43 percent higher than those from Q2 last year.
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SCOTLAND's coal industry is to mark a major milestone next month when Scottish Resources Group, formerly part of British Coal, floats on the London Stock Exchange.

Britain's second-biggest coal producer will be valued at £250 million in a listing that will raise £25m and accelerate the growth of its renewable energy and property interests. Click here for full story

The power firm hoping to build the UK's first new coal-fired power station equipped with carbon capture technology has been accused of making a series of "sloppy" and "serious errors" in its planning application. Environmentalists claim the mistakes in Ayrshire Power's proposal to build a £3bn 1,800MW coal-fired plant close to Hunterston nuclear power station raise significant questions about the credibility of its plans. Click here for full story

Plans for a new coal power station in Ayrshire “make a mockery” of Scotland’s much-vaunted green credentials, campaigners have claimed. Environment group WWF Scotland said the £3 billion plant proposed by Ayrshire Power would be “damaging and superfluous”, and that it was possible to meet the country’s electricity needs without resorting to coal……. Because it would trial carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) to reduce CO2 emissions, Ayrshire Power – owned by Peel Energy – said the power plant would not pollute as much as existing coal stations. Click here for full story

Controversial plans for the first coal-fired power station to be built since the 1970s have been formally lodged. The proposal to develop at Hunterston in Ayrshire, first submitted in March, has been checked by officials and can now be opened for public comment and consideration by the Scottish Government. Click here for full story

Rising costs have prompted new fears for one of the central planks of the Scottish Government’s strategy for cutting climate pollution. Scottish ministers want to keep burning coal in power stations by developing technology to capture and store the carbon dioxide they belch out. But new evidence from Norway suggests that this could cost nearly three times more than expected. Click here for full story

The UK's carbon capture and storage (CCS) sector will be able to sustain 100,000 jobs by 2030 and generate up to £6.5bn a year, the government claimed today (17 March). Unveiling a new strategy to encourage the growth of CCS, the energy and climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, said it represents a "massive industrial growth opportunity". Click here for full story

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Industrial Strategy outlines industry worth up to £6.5 billion and sustaining up to 100,000 jobs by 2030...... Yorkshire and Humber identified as the UK's first low carbon economic area for CCS...... £6.3 million awarded to SSE's (Scottish and Southern Energy) 5MW carbon capture project in Ferrybridge, Yorkshire..... New Government Office of CCS takes up work driving development of policy, technology, regulation and funding. Industrial growth, energy security and action on climate change are the three prizes to be had in backing Carbon Capture and Storage technology, Ed Miliband said today (17 March). Click here for full story

Climate activists are predicting a campaign of direct action against a new coal-fired power station that could be the UK's first to fit carbon-capture technology. Campaigners say that if the proposed 1.6GW station in Ayrshire is approved, it will be the "new Kingsnorth", a reference to E.ON's controversial coal-fired plant in Kent that sparked battles between protesters and police before E.ON finally shelved it. Click here for full story

Funding was today (12 March) awarded to E.ON and ScottishPower for design and development studies as part of the competition to build one of the world's first commercial scale carbon capture and storage demonstration plants. The funding will support Front End Engineering and Design studies, which will enable the bidders to further their designs for the projects at Kingsnorth and Longannet respectively. These studies involve detailed engineering and design work and will be completed within twelve months, after which the final competition winner will be selected. Click here for full story

The first application to build a coal plant in Britain since energy secretary Ed Miliband introduced tough new environmental rules will be submitted next week, the Guardian has learnt. UK-based conglomerate Peel Group is pressing ahead with the £3bn project to build a 1.6GW plant at Hunterston in Scotland, which will partially fit experimental carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. Its former partner, Dong Energy, dropped out last year, citing the recession. The application, which is expected to be submitted to the Scottish government on Monday, signals Peel's confidence that the unproven technology can work. Click here for full story

SNP Energy Spokesperson and MP for Angus, Mike Weir, has welcomed funding awarded by the UK Government to Scottish Power to support the design of a full-scale carbon capture and storage project at Longannet Power station in Fife but warned that adequate funding must be provided for all stages of the project if Scotland's renewable potential is to be realised. Click here for full story

Doosan Power Systems has been awarded the Rushlight Energy Environmental Award for its OxyCoal achievements. The presentation ceremony was held on Thursday 28 January 2010 in London and was attended by Tony Grayling, Head of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at the UK’s Environmental Agency. Click here for full story

The clean-coal industry has been shut out of the global emissions trading scheme at the Copenhagen climate change talks, dealing a blow to the UK, US and Australia. Click here for full story

The UK Coal Authority has awarded Clean Coal Ltd licences to investigate the potential for underground coal gasification at 5 sites in the UK. If the investigations over the next 12-18 months prove to be successful, commercial operations could start by 2014/15 and could lead to underground coal gasification producing 3-5% of the UK’s total energy requirement by that date. This would be the first time that gasification of underground coal has featured in the UK energy market. Click here for full story

ScottishPower has announced that successful testing at the prototype carbon capture unit at Longannet Power Station, which has been in operation since May, has resulted in a major breakthrough in reducing the amount of energy required to separate carbon emissions from a coal-fired power plant. Scientists and engineers working for ScottishPower and Aker Clean Carbon have been able to demonstrate reduction in the energy requirement in the improved capture process by about a third from a reference plant. Click here for full story

The European Commission will provide China with $85.85m for a clean coal project that will have almost no emissions. Both parties said they would work towards the China-EU near-zero emissions coal (NZEC) project at the 12th China-EU Summit in Nanjing, east China. The project is important if China is to meet ongoing emissions reductions targets, especially with world climate change targets being discussed in Copenhagen later this month. Click here for full story

Millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide could be prevented from entering the atmosphere following the discovery of a way to turn coal, grass or municipal waste more efficiently into clean fuels. Scientists have adapted a process called "gasification" which is already used to clean up dirty materials before they are used to generate electricity or to make renewable fuels. The technique involves heating organic matter to produce a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, called syngas. Click here for full story

Scottish Power is going head to head with Eon in a race to create Britain’s first “clean coal” power station, the UK Government confirmed. The company is proposing a pilot project costing several hundred million pounds to “retrofit” carbon capture technology to its giant generator at Longannet, Fife. It plans to pump carbon gases extracted from emissions after burning the coal through pipelines into redundant oil fields offshore, or rock capable of absorbing the carbon below the North Sea. Eon is proposing building a clean coal station in Kingsnorth, Kent, and storing the carbon in rocks below the Thames estuary. Click here for full story

Faster and fairer planning decisions on new energy infrastructure were a step closer today (9 November) as Energy and Climate Secretary Ed Miliband laid before Parliament draft texts setting out the national need for a low carbon secure energy mix. He also set out an ambitious new policy for the transition to clean coal. The draft National Policy Statements (NPSs) published today are a crucial part of reforms that will remove unnecessary planning delays facing large energy proposals. They will be the basis on which individual planning decisions are made from next March by the new Infrastructure Planning Commission. Click here for full story

The government paves the way for an ambitious new fleet of nuclear power stations and sets out plans for clean coal and renewable sources by 2020. From Somerset to Northumberland, the ten sites where Britain's new nuclear power stations could be built have been named as the Government paved the way for a massive expansion in nuclear power. The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, also set out ambitious plans for the transition towards clean coal and renewable sources by 2020. Click here for full story

Australia should not bank on being able to reduce its greenhouse emissions by storing carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants, US climate advocate Al Gore has said. A day after The Age revealed plans by the Brumby Government to gamble on "clean coal" technology in Victoria, Mr Gore expressed serious doubt about its viability and said Australia's focus should instead be on renewable energy. "I think a country like Australia probably has more usable and profitable sources of renewable energy than any other nation," Mr Gore said in an interview with The Age. Click here for full story

Plans to build a coal-fired power station in Ayrshire could still go ahead despite a decision by one of the main backers to pull out. Danish energy firm Dong said it would now act as a design partner for the station at Hunterston, next to British Energy's nuclear plant. Its partner in Ayrshire Power Limited, UK firm Peel Energy, said it remained committed to the project.
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Environmental campaigners were celebrating tonight after controversial plans for a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent were shelved, as the company behind the scheme postponed the project and blamed the recession. Energy group E.ON said recent falls in demand for electricity had forced it to rethink, but that the plant could still be built if economic conditions permitted. Click here for full story

Residents next to the site of a major new coal-fired power station have accused the devolved Scottish government in court of breaching its legal duties to consult local people about the proposal. Alex Salmond supports plans by the Danish power company Dong to build a major coal-fired station in Ayrshire to replace Hunterston nuclear power plant, claiming it would eventually be fitted with "clean coal" carbon-capture technology that will limit its CO2 emissions. But local residents have asked judges in Edinburgh to block a decision by the Scottish government to give the power station special protected status under planning regulations. Click here for full story

The new head of the UK government's official green watchdog has strongly criticised moves to build new coal-fired power stations in Britain and condemned the planned expansion of Heathrow. In his first major interview since taking office, Will Day, the incoming chair of the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), told the Guardian that construction of new coal stations, such as the planned Eon Kingsnorth facility in Kent, would provide a "lightning rod" for international protest. He dismissed industry and ministerial claims that new power stations such as Kingsnorth could be operated with limited impact on the environment by trapping and storing the carbon emissions underground. "Never use the words 'clean coal'," he said. "I do not believe clean coal exists." Click here for full story

Doosan Babcock has launched the world's largest OxyCoal firing demonstration project, a procedure that strips out the carbon dioxide from burning coal and is a step towards making full-scale carbon capture and storage a reality. The new facility in Renfrew, Scotland, will demonstrate Doosan Babcock's OxyCoal clean combustion system on a 40-megawatt burner. The project is a collaboration between Doosan Babcock, Scottish and Southern Energy PLC, a group of seven sponsors including U.K. utility Drax Group PLC, DONG A/S, Electricite de France SA, E.ON AG, Iberdrola SA's U.K. unit ScottishPower and Sweden's Vattenfall. The U.K. government and U.K. Coal PLC are also involved.
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The board of Waste2Tricity is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Ian Arbon, CEng, CEnv as Chairman. Professor Arbon’s appointment coincides with the news of a proposed joint venture to bring together the most efficient technology to convert coal into electricity combining new generation fuel cells with underground coal gasification (UCG). Professor Arbon previously served as Chairman of the Energy, Environment & Sustainability Group at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). He is also a Visiting Professor in Alternative Energy at Newcastle University. Click here for full story

The U.K., more reliant on natural gas than any country in Western Europe, will try to persuade utilities to build more wind parks and carbon-free coal plants. Britain is importing record volumes of gas, through pipelines from Norway and by ship from the Middle East, to replace production from spent North Sea fields. The purchases leave the country open to price increases and supply disruptions. Russia provides a quarter of Europe’s natural gas and cut shipments last winter because of a dispute with Ukraine. ìThe U.K.’s special dependence on gas markets for imports makes us extremely vulnerable,î said Aily Armour-Biggs, the executive officer of Global Energy Advisory Ltd. and a former head of utilities in Europe for Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. ìYou’re looking at energy prices that are going to be very high, demand destruction and possible supplier failure.î Click here for full story

Protesters are re-appropriating the climate and energy minister's name as the moniker for a day of action at the site of E.ON's proposed power station at Kingsnorth.  Click here for full story

A new Energy Bill was today proposed for the forthcoming session of Parliament as part of the Government’s plans to lead the world in breakthrough clean coal technology. The Bill would enable the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to introduce a financial mechanism to fund up to four commercial-scale Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) demonstration plants. The first of these could be feeding cleaner energy into the grid by the middle of the next decade. This follows the publication on 17 June of the Government’s consultation document ëA framework for the development of clean coal’ which sets out how the Government proposes to reconcile the need to curb emissions of carbon from future coal fired power stations with the need to maintain a secure diverse energy mix. Click here for full story

Clean coal technology could bring between £2-4 billion a year into the UK economy by 2030, and support between 30,000-60,000 in jobs such as engineering, manufacturing and procurement, according to new independent research published today (17 June). The report, ëFuture Value Of Coal Carbon Abatement Technologies To UK Industry’ by AEA Group, is published today alongside the Government’s consultation document ëA framework for the development of clean coal’. Click here for full story