Carbon capture won't work until 2030, says energy boss

Tim Webb
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 February 2009 10.16 GMT

Sam Laidlaw, chief executive of Centrica, has warned that coal plants fitted with carbon capture storage (CCS) equipment are unlikely to be ready to make big cuts in Britain's emissions before 2030.
The country's geology is not suited to the technology, which is expensive and unproven, he said. This meant it would take "at least 15 years and probably closer to 20 years" before companies were in a position to deploy the technology on a large scale.
This week, energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband confirmed reports in the Guardian that the government wanted to fund more than one CCS demonstration project to accelerate development of the technology. The government favours "post-combustion" technology which could be retrofitted to clean up existing coal plants to capture their emissions.
Centrica had been developing "pre-combustion" technology which can only be attached to new plants. Laidlaw said there was a risk that CCS technology is never retrofitted to a new generation of highly-polluting coal plants. "The risk is that it will never be technically feasible because the coal plants are too far from spent aquifiers [in the North Sea where the carbon can be stored], the costs are probably high and the technology can't be retrofitted," he said. "If you start from scratch it's a better solution."
The comments came as Centrica announced it was creating 1,500 mostly "green-collar" jobs to build wind farms and low-carbon power plants such as nuclear reactors and also to install energy-saving boilers and solar panels in homes.
Laidlaw said the jobs will be created over the next year as it gears up to invest £15bn by 2020 to build the equipment, as well as investing in new sources of gas supply and gas storage facilities.
The owner of British Gas, which announced it was cutting gas bills last month by 10%, did not commit to further price cuts. Last year British Gas increased gas bills by half, blaming soaring oil and wholesale energy prices. Since last summer's peak, energy prices have slumped by more than half.
Laidlaw said: "If we see wholesale gas prices continue to fall I would hope that by the end of the year we might be able to do further price reductions."
Laidlaw said negotiations were continuing with French-owned EDF Energy over buying a stake in nuclear generator British Energy. EDF signed an agreement in principle to sell a 25% stake in the company to Centrica when the French group bought British Energy last autumn. Since then power and share prices have slumped and some Centrica shareholders are understood to be urging Laidlaw to pull out of the deal.
Centrica announced that group profits for last year fell by a fifth to £904m because of higher taxes. It announced £1.4bn of writedowns on the value of forward contracts it had signed to purchase gas and electricity in the market. A slide in energy prices has left these costing more than current market rates.
Profits fell at the British Gas supply business because the company did not pass on the full increase in the wholesale cost of energy when prices were at their peak. This was offset by a rise in profits at Centrica's gas production arm, which benefited from higher gas prices.