The UK is to signal the winding down of polluting coal-fired power plants, indicating they should be replaced with gas and nuclear stations, according to pre-released parts of a speech to be given yesterday.
“It cannot be satisfactory for an advanced economy like the UK to be relying on polluting, carbon-intensive 50-year-old coal-fired power stations,” UK Secretary for State Energy and Climate Change Amber Rudd is to say.
“Let me be clear: this is not the future,” it said.
It comes as the UK struggles to meet its energy needs, as its power capacity has dwindled due to plant closures, while it is under pressure to adopt cleaner energy sources to curb climate change.
Rudd is to say that more investment is to be made in nuclear energy and that coal plants could be replaced with new gas-burning power stations.
“One of the greatest and most cost-effective contributions we can make to emission reductions in electricity is by replacing coal-fired power stations with gas,” it said.
“Gas is central to our energy-secure future. In the next 10 years, it’s imperative that we get new gas-fired power stations built,” it said.
While gas is less polluting than coal, environmentalists warn that burning gas still releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide and recommend investment in renewable energy sources such as wind or solar power instead.
“Phasing out coal — if that’s what’s being suggested — is essential for the climate,” Friends of the Earth senior energy campaigner Simon Bullock said.
“But switching from coal to gas is like an alcoholic switching from two bottles of whisky a day to two bottles of port,” he said.
It comes as countries prepare to meet in Paris at the end of this month for the UN Conference of Parties (COP21), aimed to forge an international deal to curb carbon emissions and stave off the worst effects of global warming.
Meanwhile, China, the world’s most polluting nation, could have as much as 200 gigawatts of surplus coal-fired power in the next five years, or almost 18 percent more than the EU’s total generating capacity from the fossil fuel, a report by Greenpeace East Asia and North China Electric Power University said.
The finding, based on an analysis of the Asian nation’s plans, also reveals that as much as ¥700 billion (US$110 billion) could be spent in the coal-power industry through 2020, investments that might ultimately be fruitless because of overcapacity. The burning of coal, one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions, has been blamed as one of the leading causes of China’s air pollution.
“China needs to hit the brakes on the out of control expansion in its coal power sector,” Greenpeace East Asia climate and energy campaigner Dong Liansai said in the report.
Of the five provinces studied, the northern province of Shanxi and Xinjiang in the northwest face the most severe overcapacity, the report said.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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