Memorandum submitted by Doosan Babcock
Energy Limited
1.Doosan Babcock is a UK-based supplier and
developer of advanced supercritical pulverised coal power plants
and CO2 capture systems. We welcome this inquiry by the EAC because
we are concerned that the government is not moving fast enough
to deliver its own objectives on global CO2 reduction from fossil
fuels or security of electricity supplies in the UK. More urgency
is vital.
We have more than 116 years experience of supplying
boilers for coal-fired power plant, including half of the UK fleet
and over 42 GW in China. Our advanced supercritical boiler technology
is world-class. The company has invested heavily in innovation
and offers best-in-class boiler technology (capture ready) and
CO2 capture systems. Doosan Babcock has been nominated the centre-of-excellence
for boilers and CO2 capture in the global Doosan Group.
2.The company recognises that early introduction
of Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) is a vital step towards
achieving global CO2 reductions from use of fossil-fuels.
We believe that rapid building of coal-fired
power plants is essential to meet the "generation gap"
in the UK, ahead of the date when new nuclear plants will be commissioned,
if a balanced generation portfolio is to be retained.
To this end, we advocate two parallel actions
in the UK:
(i) Early implementation of several CCS demonstration
projects for CO2 capture and storage, such projects are needed
in the UK to cover the range of capture technologies and storage
sites. These are needed to determine the best technologies and
to initiate the build-up of industry capacity, with a view to
full commercialisation and rapid and widespread deployment of
CCS globally from 2020. Funding support incentives for such projects
should come from the new revenues which will arise from the auctioning
of CO2 allowances for power plants (7% in Phase 2 of the ETS,
100% in Phase 3 from 2013). This is proposed by the EU Commission
in the draft EU Directive on revision of the Emissions Trading
System.
(ii) Early build of best available technology,
capture-ready advanced supercritical pulverised coal power plants,
such as that planned for Kingsnorth and those being considered
for Tilbury and Longannet.
We believe these actionsin parallelset
the best global example with respect to CO2 reduction and security-of-supplies.
3.Our experience is that many new power plants
overseas are being designed without regard for subsequent CCS
and thereby potentially will lock-in carbon emissions. We need
to be able to point to examples of capture-ready plants in our
home territory. References of best-available technology are essential
for our export business.
4.The concept of capture-ready has been studied
by the IEA Greenhouse Gas Programme in response to a request at
the July 2005 G8 summit. The IEA report (IEA GHG 2007/4 "CO2
Capture Ready Power Plants") concludes the main considerations
for Capture Ready are:
* Carry out a study of capture retrofit options.
* Leave space and access for capture plant.
* Identify reasonable route(s) to storage
of CO2.
We understand that the Kingsnorth project (2
x 800 MW) meets all three criteria.
5.In the capture-ready mode, the proposed Kingsnorth
power plant would reduce CO2 emissions by about 20% compared to
the old coal-fired power plants it would displace and once CCS
is fitted the reduction would be about 90%. The CO2 capture technology
envisaged for Kingsnorth would be suitable for retrofit to capture-ready
supercritical coal-fired power in China, India, etc.
6.In 2004, we were predicting that 22 GW of
new plant would be needed by 2016. There is now clear evidence
that the capacity of the power industry (globally) will be insufficient
to meet the needs for new power plants unless the contracts are
reasonably phased, and this will require capture-ready coal and
capture-ready gas projects to be built as soon as possiblein
parallel with an early CCS demonstration.
A programme of three or four coal-fired power
plants in parallel with the currently planned gas-fired power
stations would create 8-10,000 Engineering and Construction jobs
in the UKin skill sets that will also be needed for construction
of nuclear and renewables power plants.
2 June 2008
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