Call for plants with heat recovery technology

By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent
Published: June 3 2009 03:37

New coal-fired power stations such as Kingsnorth should be approved only if fitted with a mechanism to recover waste heat for its reuse in buildings nearby, says the Institution of Civil Engineers.
The move would reduce the UK’s heavy reliance on gas for heating, which accounts for half the energy consumed.

Keith Tovey, the author of Wednesday’s ICE report and energy science director at the University of East Anglia, said there was no reason why power stations fitted with new technology to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions should not also reuse their excess heat.
“They are not exclusive. You could have both,” he said. “If a new power station is being planned, it should perhaps be for the local authorities to carry out an assessment [on reusing the waste heat].”
The government is considering several plans from electricity companies to build carbon capture and storage facilities at power stations, of which Kingsnorth, on the Medway in Kent, is one.
But environmental campaigners have attacked the plans because at Kingsnorth only a quarter of the plant would be fitted with the technology. That means a net rise in emissions, they say, which should not be permitted.
Capturing the waste heat would be a way of making any such new plants more environmentally sound, argued Mr Tovey.
Power stations have an efficiency level of only 35 per cent, partly because much of the heat from burning coal is vented. But the technology to recycle heat, known as combined heat and power, is well understood and is used extensively elsewhere, including in Scandinavia and Russia. The heat can be piped to homes and to large buildings such as schools, hospitals and factories, at little cost.
The Kingsnorth/Tilbury cluster near London was identified by the ICE as one of the best sites in the country for combined heat and power, as its power plants lie close to populous areas.
“If half of the heat lost during electricity production could be captured, it would meet 25 per cent of the UK’s heat demand,” Mr Tovey said.
Feeling the heat
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009