The Climate Change Bill signalled a new political dawn, but increasing emissions from power stations could undo all that good work well before the year 2020.
Greenhouse gas emissions have rocketed by nearly 30% since 1999, and 6% in 2006 alone. The reason, a report commissioned by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has revealed, is that Britain’s power stations have been switching from burning high price gas to cheaper but more carbon intensive coal. If this trend continues then the makers of the report have “serious concerns” as to whether or not the government can reach the projected 26% to 32% cuts promised in less than 13 years time.
“The UK is seen as taking the lead on climate change internationally,” said Paul King, director of campaigns for WWF-UK, “but these findings show that we urgently need to get to grips with our emissions to give us credibility on the world stage.”
The power sector accounts for around a third of the UK’s greenhouse gases and emissions have now reached their highest levels since 1992. In the 1990s fuel companies were involved in what became known as the ‘dash for gas’, which drove down carbon emissions almost by accident.
“This is a disgrace for Britain,” said Keith Allott, head of climate change at WWF-UK. “[It] shows that for the past decade the government has talked a good game on climate change while failing dismally to tackle emissions from the high polluting sector.”
It is very worrying that major power stations are going back to coal. It would not be half so bad if they were introducing the latewt technology, ie. gassifying the coal, removing the CO2 and other pollutants, burning the gas to drive gas turbines and then using the exhaust gases to generate steam to drive more turbines. I understnad this give around 50% efficiency compared with 30%. Pumping the CO2 underground seems a bit risky to me and uses quite a bit of power, reducing that 50%.
The right approach is local power generation using CHP from gas, or better from biomass, plus small scale winf and PV. All tall buildings should carry PV arrays and wind generators and new tall buildings should be carbon neutral. Woking has shown us the way, and London is doing its best to follow - albeit a long way behind - we should all follow.
Comment by Tom Greeves — March 29, 2007 @ 7:30 pm