Budget 2009: Funding for carbon capture projects

Chancellor pledges up to four demonstration carbon capture and storage plants in 2009 budget

Juliette Jowit
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 April 2009 15.13 BST

A big increase in support for equipment to capture and store pollution from coal and gas power plants was announced in today's budget (pdf), although many details are yet to be decided.
The chancellor pledged up to four demonstration projects for carbon capture and storage (CCS), far more than the current policy of just one.
But the government also has a policy of building up to eight new coal plants , and CCS demonstration projects only trap a fraction of emissions.
£90m was announced in the budget to pay for more research into the technology, but funding for the demonstration sites is likely to come from the European commission and what the chancellor called a "new funding mechanism" - likely to end up as a levy on consumer bills.
Another problem for government is that the technology has never been proven on such a large scale, so nobody knows how much it will cost. They only know that, at least at first, it will be eye-wateringly expensive - current estimates to build and run the first proposed demonstration are £750m-£1.5bn.
Environmental campaigners now want ministers to commit to building no new coal plants without CCS. "Building CCS demonstration projects is pointless unless there are strong regulations that prevent the prospect of the energy companies building regular highly polluting coal plants with the odd small CCS experiment bolted onto the side," said John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace.
The government is expected to make a major announcement on its plans for CCS tomorrow.