carbon capture & storage: why we need a campaign against longannet mandy meikle scotland against...

Carbon Capture & Storage:Why we need a campaign

against Longannet

Mandy MeikleScotland Against New Coal

Scottish Climate Camp13 June 2009

Longannet power station, in Fife, is Scotland’s largest coal-fired power

station

Peter Macdonald, http://flickr.com/search/?q=Longannet&l=cc&ct=0

Owned & operated by Scottish Power, a subsidiary of Iberdrola

Installed capacity - 2,400 MW (4 x 600MW boilers)

2008 facts & figures

Owned & operated by Scottish Power, a subsidiary of Iberdrola

Installed capacity - 2,400 MW (4 x 600MW boilers)

2008 facts & figures

2,496,000 tonnes of coal49,000 tonnes of Waste Derived Fuel13,000 tonnes of biomass

What goes in1:

Owned & operated by Scottish Power, a subsidiary of Iberdrola

Installed capacity - 2,400 MW (4 x 600MW boilers)

2008 facts & figures

CO2 – 5,957,000 tonnesSO2 – 23,600 tonnesNOx – 14,100 tonnesdust – 390 tonnesHCl – 289 tonnes

2,496,000 tonnes of coal49,000 tonnes of Waste Derived Fuel13,000 tonnes of biomass

What comes out2:

What goes in1:

Owned & operated by Scottish Power, a subsidiary of Iberdrola

Installed capacity - 2,400 MW (4 x 600MW boilers)

2008 facts & figures

288,000 tonnes fly ash was also produced, the majority of which was sold to industry or piped as a slurry to nearby land reclamation3.

2,496,000 tonnes of coal49,000 tonnes of Waste Derived Fuel13,000 tonnes of biomass

What comes out2:

What goes in1:

CO2 – 5,957,000 tonnesSO2 – 23,600 tonnesNOx – 14,100 tonnesdust – 390 tonnesHCl – 289 tonnes

NOx: Longannet is fitted with 'Low-NOx' burners yet it still came tenth in the league of big NOx polluters1. Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) technology will be fitted at Longannet to continue beyond 2015 – til 2030

Sulphur: In 2008, flue gas desulphurisation equipment was installed to remove sulphur dioxide from the emissions of three of its four boilers. Scottish Power can now burn Scottish coal again2 – which means opencast coal

Longannet also burns sewage sludge, which is illegal3, but was allowed as part of an agreement which required Scottish Power to construct, and have in operation, a biomass plant by 2010. A 25 MW Longannet Biomass Power Station is now in planning4 but now it’s all about...

Pollution

Carbon Capture & Storage

A demonstration of CCS began at Longannet on 29 May 2009

Longannet is one of 3 contenders left in the Government’s CCS competition

Even by 2014, Longannet would only capture CO2 from half of one boiler (300MW) – this is

too little too late

What is Carbon Capture & Storage?There are 3 methods currently used in industry:

Pre-combustion: fossil fuel is burned & converted into synthetic gas (e.g. for fuel) and the CO2 is captured

Oxy-fuel combustion: similar but the fuel is burned in oxygen instead of air. Again, CO2 is removed from the fossil fuel by chemical processes

Post-combustion: CO2 is removed after combustion of the fossil fuel - this is the scheme that would be applied to conventional power plants

The technology is well understood but not at the same scale as required in a commercial

power station

What’s the problem?UnprovenThis technology is totally unproven at the scales required. We are betting the climate that CCS will be made to work

What’s the problem?UnprovenThis technology is totally unproven at the scales required. We are betting the climate that CCS will be made to work

CostCCS increases the fuel requirement of a coal-fired power plant by 25%. Storage and other system costs increase the costs of CCS by 30-60%1

What’s the problem?UnprovenThis technology is totally unproven at the scales required. We are betting the climate that CCS will be made to work

CostCCS increases the fuel requirement of a coal-fired power plant by 25%. Storage and other system costs increase the costs of CCS by 30-60%1

Energy demandcaptured by amine scrubbers or quicklime requires heat to remove the captured CO2, which typically results in extra energy costs of 20-30% compared to plants with no capture2

What’s the problem?UnprovenThis technology is totally unproven at the scales required. We are betting the climate that CCS will be made to work

CostCCS increases the fuel requirement of a coal-fired power plant by 25%. Storage and other system costs increase the costs of CCS by 30-60%1

Energy demandcaptured by amine scrubbers or quicklime requires heat to remove the captured CO2, which typically results in extra energy costs of 20-30% compared to plants with no capture2

Enhanced Oil Recoverymay act as a stimulus for CCS especially if developers believe that oil will remain at over $100 per barrel3

There’s no Plan BNo debate over what we are doingIt’s a given that CCS is the way forward. We will not stop burning coal so CCS “must be made to work”. So why here? We have renewable resources & should be experimenting with localisation. Why not set up a massive aid programme to develop CCS where it’s needed?

There’s no Plan BNo debate over what we are doingIt’s a given that CCS is the way forward. We will not stop burning coal so CCS “must be made to work”. So why here? We have renewable resources & should be experimenting with localisation. Why not set up a massive aid programme to develop CCS where it’s needed?

NGOs making supportive statementsNew-builds versus retrofit: WWF1 reports that future CCS emissions reductions at Longannet are equivalent to turning off 2 coal-fired power stations for a year whereas new-builds could increase emissions by equivalent to an extra 4.5 coal-fired power stations a year

There’s no Plan BNo debate over what we are doingIt’s a given that CCS is the way forward. We will not stop burning coal so CCS “must be made to work”. So why here? We have renewable resources & should be experimenting with localisation. Why not set up a massive aid programme to develop CCS where it’s needed?

NGOs making supportive statementsNew-builds versus retrofit: WWF1 reports that future CCS emissions reductions at Longannet are equivalent to turning off 2 coal-fired power stations for a year whereas new-builds could increase emissions by equivalent to an extra 4.5 coal-fired power stations a year

Opportunities for the North SeaA report out last month said the North Sea has the capacity to store all of Europe's CO2 for 200 years!

SANC launched on 1 October 2008

SANC formed as part of the No New Coal movement

SANC was to be the ‘spiky’ end of a coalition of Scottish NGOs but we are totally opposed to

CCS

SANC has met with Scottish Power twice & are meeting with local MP on 10 July

SANC wants to start a public debate on why CCS is not the answer

If the demonstration works, will you commit to fitting CCS to all 4 boilers?

If so, when?

If not, why not?

If the demonstration does not work, will you commit to closing Longannet immediately?

We want Scottish Power to answer these questions:

We need answers to these questions to get the debate going

Meanwhile, we need a demonstration of our own...that not everyone is falling for the CCS myth

Scotland Against New Coal

http://sancnews.wordpress.com