SaskPower’s president of carbon capture and storage initiatives Mike Monea, who gave the keynote speech at the WCA workshop in London, said “coal is not going away”, noting that there were still 2300 coal plants worldwide and 1000 coal plants planned in the immediate future.
“By 2020, coal will surpass oil as the top global fuel,” he said, adding that 45% of the world’s electricity was generated by coal in 2013.
He also cited International Energy Agency head Maria van der Hoeven, who said: “As long as fossil fuels and carbon-intensive industries play dominant roles in our economies, carbon capture and storage will remain a critical greenhouse gas reduction solution.”
The Asian Development Bank’s energy division director Ashok Bhargava also said that CCS on coal-fired power plants provided the bank with the “largest opportunity for application – and [SaskPower’s] Boundary Dam shows how it can be done”
“Unless we do CCS, we’re never going to meet long-term climate change goals,” he said.
“This project provides us an opportunity to learn how we can directly apply CCS in China.”
RFC’s John Williams said in a note yesterday that while Big Oil, particularly in Europe, has this month been trying to portray natural gas as an “environmentally friendly” power source, he indicated that there was an element of hypocrisy to this notion.
“[Gas is] a fossil fuel that produces greenhouse gases,” RFC said. “It’s maybe not as toxic as some of the stuff that is being burned in emerging markets like China right now, but new technologies designed to reduce carbon emissions at coal-fired power stations are now well advanced, generally cutting emissions by some 30%.
“As always, this will come down to costs and efficiency. I wouldn’t be writing coal off for a long time to come.”
The London workshop also heard from Alstom vice president of global public affairs Giles Dickson, Capture Power CEO Leigh Hackett, World Energy Resources executive chair Hans-Wilhelm Schiffer from the World Energy Council, along with WCA CEO Benjamin Sporton.
“One thing which did achieve almost unanimous consensus amongst panellists and audience members alike was the importance of CCS in tackling carbon dioxide emission levels, as most people agreed that coal-fired generation was likely to remain a primary source of energy, especially in the developing world,” the WCA said in its blog yesterday.
“It was encouraging to see that the technology had the backing of numerous stakeholders from a range of backgrounds.”
Dickson also noted a trend that backed up RFC’s claim about coal’s future: new power plants in non-OECD countries are largely coal.
Coal net capacity additions represent 764 gigawatts from 2011-2035, according to the IEA.
Dickson also revealed that while there was a growing share of gas and renewables across the globe, there was still more than 300GW of new steam plants to be built over the next five years.
However, this did not necessarily mean doom for climate change, as industrial progress had achieved strong emission reductions due to progress in coal plant technology.
He said carbon dioxide emissions had been cut by 35% with new technology.
