Powering to the front in the carbon capture race

Published Date: 09 October 2009
THE green lobby is proclaiming victory in the battle with German energy giant E.ON over its plans to build a coal-fired power station in the south of England. But the decision to postpone the Kingsnorth project is also good news for ScottishPower.
The environmentalists were celebrating the delay after claiming Kingsnorth would pump six million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. It brings a truce to a two-year struggle that began with Greenpeace campaigners staging a highly publicised protest on the Kent site.E.ON says it has postponed the project because recession has dampened demand for electricity. That may be so, as the rise in company failures is bound to have reduced consumption.However, there was always more to it than E.ON facing a decline in demand, or trying to vary its mix of energy sources.The company was hoping to fit equipment to the new station that would enable it to capture dangerous greenhouse gas emissions which, ironically, should have helped the environmental cause. As such it has been in competition to secure £1 billion in government subsidy to build the UK's first clean coal plant.E.ON is up against a consortium involving ScottishPower, Shell and National Grid, and another led by RWE npower. A shortlist is due to be announced soon with a decision on the winning bid expected next year. It is thought that a new industry could arise creating up to 50,000 jobs.Yesterday's announcement should not come as too great a surprise. Scotland on Sunday revealed last month that E.ON's chief executive, Paul Golby, had become frustrated at government planning delays and was hinting that he would not be able to meet the 2014 deadline for the carbon capture and storage (CCS) competition.But, before ScottishPower gets too carried away, E.ON has not withdrawn from the process. It is talking to the Germans and Dutch about a similar project, but says nothing has changed as regards the CCS competition.However, ScottishPower has already fitted a prototype emissions unit at the company's coal-fired station at Longannet in Fife, and now that E.ON's bid is officially wounded, the Glasgow firm looks to be in pole position