Clean up our energy
How can it keep going so wrong? In spite of its fine words, the ability of the government to halt emissions from coal and gas-fuelled electricity generation remains unproven. This week, the Environmental Audit Committee lambasted government failures to get moving on 'carbon dioxide capture and storage' in the UK. Meanwhile, the electricity generating industry wishes to build new power plants, as about a third of UK electricity generation will close from now onwards towards 2020. One touchstone for this dilemma is the UK's first new efficient coal power plant for 30 years, proposed at Kingsnorth.
To electricity companies, coal power looks secure and cheaper to operate than gas, and is attractive to meet rapidly varying demand for electricity. However an Early Day Motion from over 220 Westminster MPs is requesting a public inquiry before construction of the plant at Kingsnorth, this year the Climate Camp of environmental activists will target Kingsnorth, and Lord Rees on behalf of the Royal Society has written that all new coal plants should capture 90 per cent of carbon dioxide by 2020 – or close.
The government appears paralysed by consultation, and has made no decision on what 'ready to capture' really means for coal. Of course, it is the actual capture operation that really counts, not just being ready. Cleaning emissions should be an easy government win, not a trap to fall into.
Based on its own rhetoric, scrubbing carbon dioxide emissions then transport by pipeline and storing safely in rocks deep beneath the North Sea should be a key government priority. There has been plenty of time to think about the problem. In the 2003 Energy White paper, the government promised 'an urgent detailed implementation plan' for carbon dioxide storage. After the G8 meeting in Gleneagles in 2005, the UK promised 'rapid action on carbon capture and storage'. Three years later, nothing is built or funded – and no site identified, and no pipeline network planned.
Instead, in May 2007, the government decided on a competition to build a clean coal plant, not due to finish until mid-2009. A single project will be awarded about £1bn to subsidise capture, transport and storage on just part, of just one, coal-fuelled power plant, to work by 2014. Although that is a step, it is hard to see how a single plant will kick-start a global industry or position the UK to take a global lead in technology development.
Moreover, the sum pales in comparison to the many tens of billions in investment that will be needed to provide clean UK electricity. In the meantime, the power sector will continue to contribute more than one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK, for the foreseeable future.
The government has done exceptionally well in changing laws nationally, and leading the charge internationally to legalise storage of captured carbon dioxide deep beneath the seafloor. It has also begun small-scale cooperative efforts with China. On that basis, the UK claims a global leadership. However, our reading of international activity suggests that the UK will no longer be first to build the new power plants, but may follow after Australia, Norway, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, and even the USA, China and Japan.
Is there a way forward? Even though carbon-free renewables and nuclear will grow in electricity supply, coal and gas are still predicted to generate the majority of UK electricity between now and 2050. So capturing carbon from fossil fuel generation is essential to reduce UK emissions by at least 60 per cent.
To develop equipment which cleans up the emissions is quite feasible, in a technologically diverse, talented, globally-connected and innovative country; to finance the operation of experimental power plants is quite possible, using targeted subsidies gleaned from the green taxes of the European Emissions Trading Scheme; to store the carbon is quite possible – rocks beneath the North Sea are some of the world's largest, best known, secure and most accessible reservoirs.
Time after time, expert reports call for carbon capture to be built, now. This is urgent: the ocean is already measurably more acidic due to dissolved CO2 and sea level is rising faster than expected because of global warming.
The International Energy Agency, the Stern Review, the most recent G8 meeting in Japan, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, all cite carbon capture as forming 20-50 per cent of the quickest, most direct, and cheapest solutions to greenhouse gas emissions from now to 2050. Multiple UK government reports have analysed the opportunity. All conclude that the UK can gain many tens of billions of pounds in business from clean coal and gas power plant in the next decades. But little of that new industry will happen unless real projects develop those skills within the UK.
The government has successfully stoked great enthusiasm in a UK carbon capture industry, developers are elbowing their way in to compete. But is the sum total of UK policy, merely to produce one winner and 15 losers in a competition to build part of one clean coal power plant?
Government leadership on nuclear power has been clear. The recent turnaround on renewable generation demonstrates ambition from the top, based on clear and generous incentives to wind farms. Now, can government clean up the remaining 60 per cent of electricity? here is a very large gap between the market price of CO2, and the funds required to reimburse full-sized experiments in storage (€39 predicted from 2013, compared to €70-100 per ton CO2 initially required). That means introducing a subsidy linked to the EU market – there are many viable options. Learning quickly means not just one, but several clean power plants, actually built, actually operating, and built faster, with follow-through planned to become routine operations. The prize of reducing UK emissions is great, but the far bigger prize is to actually fulfil the essential goal of reducing global emissions for all humans. To do so will require making both policy and financial resources commensurate with ambitions. And making sure the UK holds on to the opportunity to deploy carbon capture, sooner than planned.
Prof Stuart Haszeldine
Dr DM Reiner
Dr J Gibbins; H Chalmers; Prof M Blunt
Imperial College, London
Prof M Downie; Prof Andrew Aplin
Newcastle upon Tyne University
Dr C Turley
Plymouth Marine Laboratory
Prof M Kendall
Prof Mercedes Maroto-Valer
Dr P Freund
Labour can do more to fund the arts
Your editorial ('Welcome to Britain 2008 - truly a home of culture', last week) falls into the same trap Tony Blair fell into, namely believing that the revival of the arts in Britain began in May 1997.
Like Blair, you make no mention of the National Lottery, which, since it was created by the last Conservative government in 1994, has pumped almost £8bn into arts and heritage. Without it, we would not have many outstanding venues, from Tate Modern to the Sage in Gateshead.
Your praise for Gordon Brown is perplexing. When Chancellor, he fought free museums tooth and nail, which is why they did not come in until 2001, four years after the pledge was made.
A more balanced editorial might also have noted that Labour's raids on the lottery mean that this government now spends less on the arts overall than the previous Conservative government; and that the Conservatives' proposal for a National Lottery Independence Bill means that a future Tory government will contribute an additional £40m every year to the arts.
Shadow Minister for the Arts
House of Commons, London SW1
Collateral damage of divorce wars
'Families lose contact after splits', (News, last week) contained some shocking information about family breakdown, such as the fact that almost a third of children never see one of their parents again.
My partner has had very little contact with his children since his break-up four years ago. The courts were not interested in awarding a contact order because of the children's ages (then 13 and 11). The children's mother said she would facilitate contact but has done the opposite, including alienating the children against him.
As well as being heartbreaking for my partner, this must be having a devastating effect on the long-term well-being of the children. The courts need to award contact orders and ensure that they are not flouted. The children's views need to be taken into account and explored to check that they are not an extension of the resident parent's views.
At a time when the role of fathers is hotly debated, we could start by trying to ensure that children are not used by disputing parents and that no one is denied the chance to be a good parent.
Name and address supplied
Driving me from drugs
Your article on Britons' drug use should be commended as an important intervention in the debate on public health in this country (Observer Magazine, last week). Anyone reading the testimonies of these vacuous individuals will be dissuaded from drug use for life. The idiotic plea that cocaine helps one to drive and park a car would be hilarious if it weren't so depressingly pathetic.
Tell us more about the Niger Delta
Peter Beaumont's report on the Niger Delta ('Civilians and oil firms flee Niger Delta as guerrilla attacks worsen', World, last week) gave a good summary of the conflicting problems facing the Yar'Adua government. But there are further issues as well.
Many would point to cultural and historic differences that have long existed between Nigeria's north and south and say that these play their part in the current tensions. They would say that northerners' history has been more hierarchical, conformist and Muslim, where the southerners' culture was more meritocratic, individualistic and Christian. These are akin to the linguistic, religious and historical differences between Belgium's Flemings and Walloons. The northern-led government of President Umaru Yar'Adua faces what many see as an instinctive resistance from the Delta communities.
There are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of children dying each week from starvation. This, in Africa's largest oil-producing country is wholly unacceptable. A negotiated solution must be found fas.
CEO, Energy Equity Resources, London W1
A shocking omission
An article about 4chan (News, last week) fails to mention pornography in any meaningful way. You do realise that you are going to scar some of your readers for life?
Adding injury to insult
Nick Cohen (Comment, last week) rightly berates Parliamentary Ombudsman Ann Abraham for recommending that an estimated £4bn of Equitable Life investors' losses should be met by the taxpayer. Why should profits be privatised and losses nationalised? However, that sum is dwarfed by the amount Parliament has decreed that taxpayers should pay to cover the cost of injuries and ill health at work. Taxpayers pay between £12bn and £15bn of the total cost of £18bn each year. Most of these injuries are caused by negligent employers. Hence the saying: 'If you want to kill or injure someone with impunity - employ them.'
Dr Gill Reed
Drive Belgians up the wall
The obvious solution to Belgium's separation difficulties (World News, last week) is to divide Brussels with a high concrete wall. A corridor from South Belgium could supply the Walloon sector of the capital with French wine and cheeses.
South Hobart, Tasmania
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