The coalface of climate change

Editorial
The Guardian,
Monday August 11 2008

The banners and the tents were folded away yesterday and the marching drums fell silent. But the dismantling of the foot soldiers' camp did not quite signal the end of the battle of Kingsnorth. Throughout the last week 1,500 protesters have been stationed close to the Kent site where the energy giant E.ON is demanding permission to replace an old power station with a new one - the first new coal-fired station for a quarter of a century. The activists talked about closing down the old station, but their real aim was preventing its replacement.
There were some arrests at the camp, but the event was overwhelmingly peaceful. Some protesters are hanging on today to help pick up the rubbish. Far from making trouble gratuitously, they agitated to warn against greater trouble that could flow from the re-throning of King Coal. Coal had fallen from fashion, being replaced by (somewhat) cleaner gas. But rising energy prices have suddenly lent it a retro appeal. If Kingsnorth goes ahead, several more stations will follow, preparing the UK for decades of solid-fuel dependence. Without new technologies, these few big power stations would pump out so much carbon that Britain would miss essential targets. And where the first world falters, the third world can justifiably argue that it should not be asked to shoulder the burden. Coal-burning in India and China would follow the UK's lead, with the world suffocating in the heat.
That must not be allowed to happen, of course, and yet there are also compelling grounds for thinking that coal must inevitably remain part of the energy mix. Energy-hungry giants such as America and China have huge coal reserves, and it is naive to hope they will not exploit them. Closer to home, the need to keep the lights on cannot be ignored, as a clutch of old power stations are retired over the next few years. In the short term at least, the obvious alternative to coal is increased reliance on gas - which could eventually spell an unhealthy dependence on the likes of Russia.
Charting a way between the hard rocks of climate change and the jagged edges of energy security will depend on carbon capture. It could transform coal into a truly clean energy source, though exactly how is not yet clear. The government grasps its importance, but says making full carbon capture a condition for new coal plants would make them too costly to build. Maybe so, but at a minimum ministers must spell out clear duties on every new station to contribute to making the technology work. That cannot just mean installing a few removable pipes and setting aside space for a possible carbon tank some years down the line. Pending climate catastrophe demands a bolder response.