Today’s Ministerial statement paving the way for 4 new coal-fired power stations is a very questionable decision. It was announced with the triumphal flourish that the era of unabated coal was now over. It certainly isn’t. Not only will existing coal stations continue to churn out huge quantities of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, most notably Drax the single biggest polluter in the country, without any requirement to abate, but even the new coal stations will not abate their emissions up till 2020 if the trials of carbon capture and storage (CCS) do not work. Nor is there any guarantee they will, when a commercial prototype has never been built anywhere in the world. And if they don’t work, the Government has given no guarantee that they will close the plants.

Ed Miliband, in support of his decision, said that CCS was an essential technology in the fight against climate change. That is not the case. By far the most effective way to tackle climate change is by switching out of fossil fuels as quickly as is feasible in favour of renewable sources of energy – mainly wind, solar, wave and tiday power, and biomass. CCS is uncertain as a technology, uncertain as to its long-term capacity to contain carbon over millennia, extremely costly (probably £1bn a plant) which has led to industry demands for a large subsidy, and only 90% efficient (i.e. 10% of the carbon will still escape).
The best argument that can be made for it is that there are enormous reserves of coal across the world, particularly in China, which are very likely to be exploited and therefore a technology should be developed to abate the consequences as far as possible. The counter to that is that it offers a huge extension to the most polluting of all the fossil fuels – indeed coal is almost pure carbon. We are continuing to pour billions of pounds into extracting these climate-destroying fuels even in the most difficult and costly conditions – e.g. oil from the Athabascan tar sands in Canada, gas from under the permafrost of Sakhalin Island in Russia, and now coal via CCS – and as a result we crowd out renewables which are the only sustainable long-term energy source for the planet.
What this latest decision really reveals is the headlock which the old industrial barons continue to exert over Government policy. Britain still generates just 4% of its electricity from renewables which, given the country’s offshore position with enormous potential resources of wind, wave power and tidal power, is pathetic: the proportion for Germany, France and Italy is 10-25%, and for Scandinavia it is as high as 35-50%. Yet UK renewables remain the Cinderella, hamstrung by excessive planning restrictions and delays, shorn of resources, and lacking either industrial muscle or political clout. Today’s decision can only the matter worse.

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