Will the UK phase out coal in a decade?

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/18/will-uk-phase-out-coal-in-decade

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The government is wrong to assume its existing policies will be enough to phase out coal power in the UK, analysts have told the Guardian.

Minister for energy and climate change Andrea Leadsom said this week that her department expected unabated (meaning without carbon capture) coal would make up just 1% of the country’s electricity generation by 2025.

Referring to a Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) report from September last year, Leadsom said the decline would occur “as a result of deployment of low carbon alternatives, the cost of generation and the investment needed to meet new pollution abatement standards”.

But this prediction is not reinforced by a mandatory end date for electricity generation from coal. Despite rhetoric from the prime minister and his ministers that coal needs to go, the government has been reluctant to set a timeline for the phase-out of the most carbon intensive fossil fuel.

Robert Gross, director of Imperial College’s Centre for Energy Policy and Technology, said relying on existing policies and the market for cleaner technologies left the door open for coal generation to continue beyond 2030.

1% coal by 2025 is a projection, not an aim, DECC confirms. See projection here: https://t.co/2vYSc5PUHm pic.twitter.com/MNDfQvmRId

“There’s a considerable range of uncertainty about how much coal will be retained on the system. And if it’s at the upper end of the range of possibilities then its going to absolutely blow the carbon budget,” he said.

A 2014 report prepared by Gross found that the range of coal generation expected to remain on the system was dependent on the price of carbon set by the government in future. With a low carbon price, coal would continue to provide 19% of electricity in 2025, down from roughly a third in 2013. A high carbon price would reduce coal generation to 3%.

Both scenarios retain more coal generation than Leadsom’s predicted 1% and both exceed the UK government Committee on Climate Change’s (CCC) decarbonisation goals for the electricity sector. The CCC has said “there can be no role for conventional coal generation in the UK beyond the early 2020s”.

Gross said little had occurred in the year since his report was published to alter the view that coal could still play a role well beyond the government’s expectations. In April, the carbon price was doubled to £23/tonne. But this is less than a third of Gross’ high carbon price scenario of £75/tonne.

He said cuts to subsidies for onshore wind and solar and a lack of committed support for offshore wind meant investors would be increasingly wary of starting new projects in the UK that could displace coal. This week the UK dropped out of the top 10 safest countries in the world for renewable investment for the first time.

Yan Qin, a carbon analyst at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon, said her modelling suggested that the UK’s relentless stripping of renewables subsidies was going to leave a big gap in demand that would be filled by existing old coal stations. She said that even under the UK’s ‘dash for gas’ policy the country would still need a “minimum of 5% to 10% of coal generation to account for power demand” by 2025.

“To assume that unabated coal only accounts for 1% of total generation by 2025, that seems quite ambitious. Especially taking into account the slower growth in renewables in the UK, because the UK is one of very few countries now that is very likely to miss the [EU] 2020 renewables target,” said Qin.

Leadsom noted that her prediction of 1% came from Decc’s “central scenario”. In fact, Decc’s predictions for coal’s future range between 6.75% to 0% by 2025. The department’s “baseline scenario” which retains the highest amount of coal relies on what Decc calls “baseline policies” – policies introduced before the UK set its carbon budgets in 2009. These “baselines” included the solar feed-in-tariff and the renewables obligation scheme for solar and wind farms, both of which were introduced before 2009 and have now been scrapped or effectively gutted.

In February, the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats signed a joint pledge on climate action that included an agreement to “end the use of unabated coal for power generation”. In response, a host of charities wrote to the leaders asking them to set a mandatory date for the full phase out of coal.

“Unless you have any explicit emissions regulations that would affect how much coal can run, then you’re reliant upon the other policies,” said Gross. “At the moment, we absolutely don’t know what [the government’s] energy policy is going to be.”

One of the policies the government expects to lead to the near total shut down of coal power stations has nothing to do with carbon emissions at all. The EU Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) has ordered plants to reduce the amount of toxic particles they spew out or be forced to close by 2023. This is likely to force some plants to shut down, although the UK has been lobbying for an exemption to keep one of its dirtiest coal stations, Aberthaw, open.

But Gross found that even with a high carbon price, some plants would continue operating. This is because it would be cheaper to add filter technology to an existing coal plant than to build a new gas or renewable facility. These filters do nothing to reduce the carbon emissions of the station.

A spokeswoman for RWE, the operators of Aberthaw, said filter technology was being fitted to the plant to reduce its NOX emissions.

“The company is committed to maintaining its fleet, to help keep the lights on, despite difficult market conditions,” she said. “We are working to ensure that Aberthaw power station will be able to operate to the latest emission standards into the 2020s.”

SSE operates two coal power stations in Britain, one of which (Ferrybridge) will close in 2016 due in part to the costs of adapting to the IED and a fire. A spokeswoman for the company would not comment on when its Fiddler’s Ferry plant might face closure.

“As the UK moves towards a cleaner energy mix coal is gradually being phased out, and the government and other parties have made it clear it doesn’t have a long-term future,” she said.