Select Committee on Environmental Audit Written Evidence


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 actions—in parallel—set 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 possible—in 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 UK—in skill sets that will also be needed for construction of nuclear and renewables power plants.

    2 June 2008





 
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