POWER WITHOUT THE EMISSIONS

“Every little bit helps,” was the message from Chris Huhne, the Energy and Climate Secretary, when he gave his support to Saddleworth residents who want financial backing for a mini-hydro scheme they hope to see built at Dovestones reservoir in the Peak District. Using overflow water it could put enough electricity into the national grid to supply the needs of 100 homes, (assuming that they are very well insulated homes that is). It’s a good scheme, not least because it will promote the technology for mini-renewable projects and raise levels of public awareness. But with the planet’s population growing by 200,000 every single day I reckon that if it is completed it will meet the increasing world demand for electricity by only one minute.

I reflected on this when I spoke at a carbon capture and storage (CCS) conference organised by the European Commission in Brussels. As a means of preventing the emission into the atmosphere of CO2 from fossil fuel power stations and major industrial installations, CCS is the only game in town. The cause for celebration is that the Commission has, at long last, published the call for tender for developers seeking financial support to build a number of CCS demonstration projects across Europe. The financial mechanism to be used is the one I was the first to propose and makes use of ‘surplus’ carbon allowances from the EU emissions trading scheme. Alas, with today’s low carbon price it will not provide nearly as much money as was once hoped.

CCS is essential if we are to reduce the level of CO2 emissions by the 80-95% regarded as necessary, but progress is painfully slow. The call to tender was much delayed, and it is now suggested that most projects won’t be in operation until past the 2015 deadline (“No, no, no,” I said). Across Europe very few governments are on track to transpose the EU directive for the storage of CO2 into national law on time, and very few have made any independent financial provision to support CCS development. The UK is one of the few honourable exceptions on all counts.

We have two front running projects. Scottish Power looks set to win the ‘UK competition’ and will separate a small portion of the CO2 that would otherwise be discharged up the chimneys of the coal power station at Longannet, transporting it by pipeline for injection into former fossil fuel bearing rock beneath the North Sea. Then there is Powerfuel Power’s project at Hatfield, near Doncaster, where construction of a 900MW integrated gas combined cycle power station is proposed, with the CO2 separated pre-combustion and transported to the North Sea by a pipeline that could also serve many other power stations and industrial plants.

The new factor on the UK scene is the possibility that the CO2 might not only be stored but also used for enhanced oil recovery. The pressurised gas would push more oil out of depleted North Sea reserves, making better use of these resources, pleasing HM Treasury, and creating a much stronger financial incentive for CCS development. Equipping a conventional power station with CCS could effectively double the cost of the electricity it generates, making it about as expensive as heavily subsidised offshore wind generation. Coupling it with enhanced oil recovery would bring down the extra cost to only as much as the subsidy paid for onshore wind power, making CCS much more attractive, especially if the price of carbon rises from its present €15/tonne. If enhanced oil recovery developments take place as I have privately heard they might, listen out for a very big announcement in months to come.

Do we really need CCS, with all its related costs? Britain gets 35% of its electricity from coal and even more from gas, Germany gets more than 50% from coal alone, Poland nearly 90%. China, India, Russia, the USA, South Africa and Australia have all got huge coal reserves and intend to generate the majority of their electricity from this carbon-intensive fuel for many decades to come. If we don’t develop CCS, there is no chance at all of the world achieving a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, the minimum amount needed to prevent average global temperatures rising by more than 2 degrees centigrade.

PUTTING CO2 TO GOOD USE

I’ve just met with a company that wants to use carbon dioxide to enhance oil recovery (EOR) beneath the North Sea. Although I have become the European Parliament’s in-house expert on carbon capture and storage issues (CCS) this was the first time I can recall people talking to me seriously about developing EOR in Europe.

The principle is simple. By pumping CO2 into the rock that bears oil you flush out more of it than will come to the surface naturally. Most of the CO2 stays underground, but what comes back up to the surface with the oil gets captured and pumped back down again for permanent storage.

Enhanced oil recovery has been carried out in the USA for decades, but for the most part the carbon dioxide has come not from power plants where it is a by product of fuel burning but has been extracted from dormant volcanoes and piped for hundreds of miles specifically for the purpose.

Applied in Britain it could allow us to gain value from the North Sea oilfields for decades longer than will otherwise be the case, while reducing our CO2 emissions into the atmosphere at the same time.

One of the most interesting meetings I have had in a long time.

SO WHAT SCUPPERED KINGSNORTH?

A lot of nonsense from E.ON about "reduced demand" being the reason why they have deferred building a new coal power station at Kingsnorth in Kent, matched only by the nonsense from some green activists about this being "the end of coal."

Sorry, but despite it being the largest single source of CO2 emissions, worldwide use of coal is fast expanding. We have to live with coal, and tackle its emissions, if we are to beat global warming.

No commentator that I noticed made the connection between E.ON and the EU's strategy to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. Just shows how anglocentric people here are.

Power companies have all been told by the UK government that they cannot build new coal power stations unless they are at least partly CCS equipped from day one. E.ON duly submitted a competitive bid for є180 million funding from the EU for CCS development, the sum to be matched by our government. Only one UK project is due to gain support at this stage and rival bids were submitted for projects at Hatfield, Longannet and Tilbury.

On 1 October the European Commission presented its recommendation to a technical working group of representatives from EU member states. The details have not yet been made public but it's no secret in Brussels that Kingsnorth was not top of the list.

One week later E.ON announced deferral of its scheme.

CLOSING OUR COAL MINES

"Coal will remain the world's single most important source of electricity throughout the lifetimes of most of us here," I have just told The Coal Authority's annual conference in Manchester.

The purpose of my speech was to provide an update on the latest state of play in Europe regarding the development of carbon capture and storage technology. The International Energy Agency predicts a huge increase in coal use over the next 20 years, and without CCS we have no hope of curtailing the emission of global warming gases.

Within 3 months I expect the European Commission to announce that it will provide support funding for 7 CCS projects across Europe, including at least one in the UK.

Parkside Colliery near St Helens was the last deep mine being worked in the once huge Lancashire coalfield. It was closed in 1993 but when Michael Heseltine signalled its doom it was still profitable and had access to years of reserves.

Now, some 15 years later, 35pc of the UK's electricity still comes from coal, although most of it is imported. That begs two questions: if coal continues to be so important why did we close some of our best mines? Worse, why did we demolish the winding gear and fill in the shafts so they could never be reopened?

ABOUT TURN

With the world's most important environment conference ever taking place in Copenhagen later this year I am throwing myself back into the work of curbing the global warming that threatens our future. These days I am regarded as the European political expert on carbon capture and storage technology that can take CO2 out of coal and inject it into old gas bearing rocks beneath the sea. It's hugely important. Coal provides one third of our electricity but if we don't reduce emissions from it we will not slow climate change.

Over the next 5 years we have the chance to reform the Common Fisheries Policy, and I plan to take a lead in pressing for radical reform to restore fish stocks. We must save our seas or there will be no fish left for our grandchildren to eat.

And on the international scene I shall continue to campaign for a Palestinian state. The new Obama administration in the USA is a breath of fresh air. Securing peace and justice in the Middle East is essential because the lack of it helps recruits terrorists who menace us all.

Chris Davies is the Liberal Democrat MEP for the North West and his party's environment spokesman in the European Parliament.

BIG BOOST FOR CCS

I've been reflecting on Ed Miliband's declaration that no new coal power stations will be authorised in Britain unless they include an element of carbon capture technology.

The climate change secretary didn't go far enough, of course, and ideally we should not be permitting any new coal fired generation, but credit where credit is due; it puts the UK at the fore of CCS development and will have a significant impact on thinking in the boardrooms of power companies.

Almost unnoticed by the media was Miliband's call for consultation on the idea of introducing emissions performance standards, limiting the amount of CO2 that can be released by any power plant, coal or gas.

In the long run the engine of CCS should be driven forward by the market, with generating companies seeking to avoid paying the cost of carbon allowances, but the technology will initially be very expensive and must be hand cranked, first through financial subsidy to get demonstration plants built, and then by regulatory requirements - such as emission performance standards.

The need for this approach has not yet been publicly recognised, and the UK government opposed the proposals for such standards I tabled last year. That Miliband is prepared to think afresh is bold and brave. Good for him!

TO HELMET OR NOT TO HELMET...

This morning I walked through the streets of The Hague, off to give evidence to a parliamentary select committee about carbon capture and storage technology.

It was a glorious spring morning, and thousands of cyclists were negotiating their way around the cars and avoiding the trams. Not one was wearing a helmet.

I have heard of studies that suggest that far from saving lives, being expected to wear cycling helmets simply discourages people from cycling at all.

They cycle a lot more in Holland than we do here, and the Dutch are equally conscious of health and safety issues. If they are doing what is right, from where has the helmet police gained their influence?

CURBING COAL

An attempt by myself and others to introduce a ban from 2015 on building new coal fired power stations unless equipped with CCS was yesterday ruled inadmissable by the chairman of the environment committee (we have signed up to some rules that amount to self castration).

I raised the issue again at a CCS conference in addition Berlin and all the power company people shook their heads. With a cap and trade emissions control system in place the introduction of emission performance standards shouldn't really be necessary but regulatory instruments in the environmental field have a track record of success. Momentum will build up behind EPSs as years pass.

SMOKE IN YOUR EYES

A visit to the coal-fired power station at Fiddler´s Ferry near Widnes, the largest source in the North West both of electricity and of CO2 emissions.

The environmental problems caused by acid rain are now much reduced in Western Europe thanks to EU measures to curb sulphur dioxide emissions from plants like this. A major new flue gas desulphurisation plant has been completed, allowing the limits on operating hours to be lifted. Under the terms of the Large Combustions Plants Directive (LCPD) the plant will now be able to stay open till the end of 2015.

I was interested to learn that up to 200MW of electricity can now be attributed to burning of biomass, much of it imported wood waste – that makes this huge coal giant also the largest source of electricity from renewable sources in the country!

My discussion with the plant manager and his team touched on the future possibilities of equipping a plant on this site with CCS technology. It is likely to be applied first where there is a cluster of high emitting installations in an area so that transport and injection costs can be shared.

I tend to think of Fiddler´s Ferry as standing in grand isolation but I am reminded that Ineos Chlor has a private power station in Runcorn to generate electricity for chlorine manufacture, there is one also at the Shotton Paper Mill no great distance away, and the Stanlow oil refinery is another high source of emissions. Potential exists to capture the CO2 released for storage in depleted Irish Sea gas reserves.

The LCPD Directive will require the closure of power stations that don´t by then meet SO2 and NOx reduction targets, and with old nuclear stations also closing there is a threat that by 2016 we could be facing a serious shortage of generating capacity. CCS on a commercial scale will only just be getting underway by then. Maybe we should consider putting back the closure deadlines rather than considering building new coal-fired power stations before they can be equipped with CCS. Think I shall try and get an impact assessment commissioned.

MEETING THE BRUSSELS BUREAUCRATS´ BUREAUCRAT

They´re a shadowy lot, these faceless, unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. I know they must be because the Daily Mail says so. Maybe I should have worn a cloak and carried a dagger when I stepped into a lift in the Berlaymont - European Commission HQ - on my way to meet with the boss, the Secretary-General, Catherine Day.

But close up, Brussels bureaucrats usually seem like ordinary human beings. Catherine is striking - Irish, tall, and formidably on top of her brief (or if not she is a class act at bluffing). She is a former head of DG Environment and I´ve come across her a few times in the past. Nick Clegg was a colleague with her in Leon Brittain´s Cabinet some 13 years ago and tells me her capacity for work then was awesome.

I had emailed her before Christmas, fresh from the success of having secured funding of up to €9 billion, to ask for a meeting to discuss the development of the programme to construct up to 12 carbon capture and storage demonstration projects. A meeting was arranged for the first week of the New Year. Sitting with her now are Jos Delbeke, the Deputy Director of DG Environment, Piotr Tulej from the same department, and Jan Panek from DG TREN (Energy) who has to do most of the real work.

My concern is to ensure that implementation starts to happen quickly now that money is available, and as more than one Commission department will be involved I want assurance from the top that turf wars will not be allowed to get in the way.

It proves a happy meeting with everyone singing from the same hymn sheet. Catherine emphasises that developing CCS is regarded as a priority. Jos agrees emphatically. Jan explains that there are some 30 potential projects in the pipeline and that firm declarations of intent will now be sought. The Commission will be looking for match support funding from member states and wants to get construction of the first few schemes underway as soon as possible.

They say nice things about my CCS work and hope that I will maintain my involvement. I indicate that this is my intent and invite the Commission to take part in a public workshop I shall be organising on the subject before the end of the parliamentary term, to which they assent.

I depart, ego duly flattered. Maybe the faceless ones have deceived me, but the bureaucrats have won another battle.

LIGHT RELIEF

British Blood - Europe says No!

The local blood transfusion service are holding one of their regular blood donor sessions in the Parliament in Brussels.

Anyone who lived in Britain between 1980 and 1996 need not apply. The possibility exists, it is said, that mad cow disease (BSE) can be transmitted even years after contamination.

So British blood isn't good enough for Europe.

A new solution to Global Warming

Meanwhile, in an aside from a discussion about CCS, an Australian trade unionist tells me that kangaroos emit very little methane; something to do with microbes in the gut.

Could be useful given the high proportion of CO2 emissions in some countries that stem from intensive rearing of animals in huge numbers.

Now if we could only cross a marsupial with a cow - a jumping kangermoo perhaps.

STEAMING AHEAD

The Davies Christmas letter to friends and relatives has been despatched. Of course it contains a few paragraphs devoted to the carbon capture and storage campaign but I realise now that there is one glaring omission. How can I have forgotten to make mention of the second most important event of the year?

On 15 May the first passenger train in 40 years pulled out of Alloa station and headed up the line towards Stirling. A steam special, pulled by 61994 'The Great Marquess' (LNER K4), it passed under the town bridges and the site of the branch line that once led down to the docks, alongside the park where scores of children stood waving, across Grange Road and the site of Alloa West Junction signal box, and then onto the embankment by the side of the house where my grandparents and great grandparents had lived from the 1890s to 1970.

By then the train was out of town, running alongside the trees growing where once there was a marshalling yard with wagons that screeched and crashed, on to Cambus and the whisky warehouses, past the site of Manor Powis colliery, beneath Wallace's monument, round the bend to cross the Forth overlooked by Stirling Castle, across the junction with the main line to Perth and into the station platforms.

Sheer bliss, what a cathartic experience.

Early memories crowd in of listening from the bedroom of my grandparents' house to the sound of steam locomotives painfully, but determinedly, hauling trains of coal wagons out of the marshalling yard on their way to Kincardine power station. The smoke would rise in the icy morning air above the trees until the engine would finally emerge, visible for just a few seconds before passing out of view behind the house.

Then, one day in 1967, a poster appeared that marked the beginning of the end: "Notice of Withdrawal of Passenger Services." I was 12 but was sufficiently outraged to take my first political act, writing to the Scottish Transport Users Consultative Committee to protest. (I also spent an evening writing protest posters, but discovered the following morning as I went around the town that I had not thought through how to stick them onto walls!).

The passengers service between Stirling, Alloa and Edinburgh went the following year, and Alloa was left as the largest town in Scotland without a station. The coal mines closed and the last goods train ran in 1983. The line became derelict, but the rails were not lifted and nothing was built on the trackbed that could prevent its reopening. By 1988 a campaign was underway to bring that about.

The achievement this year has re-established the line from Stirling as far as Longannet power station for coal trains, and as far as Alloa for an hourly passenger service from Glasgow, but with a hefty price tag of £86 million for the 21km route. Passenger figures for the first months of operation are said to be double those forecast. All credit to the Scottish Executive and little Clackmannan Council for bringing about the rejuvenation.

It's taken 40 years and a lot of money but it feels good to have been proven right. They should have listened to me in the first place: the line should never have been closed!

Good thing it is in Scotland, where railway re-openings have become commonplace since the country gained home rule. If the line had been south of the border, with finances controlled by the Treasury and directed by the Department for Transport, all hopes of its restoration would long since have been dead and buried.

Merry Christmas everyone!

THE VOTES ARE OVER

By majorities of more than 600 to 100 the various legislative elements of the EU's climate change package were approved today by the European Parliament. UKIP and its fellow travellers voted against I believe, and the Greens carped, as Greens do, but opposition from the Germans, Poles, and others voicing concern about loss of profits and loss of jobs faded away once the 27 governments had given their assent.

The result is not as ambitious as I would like, and there will be a real battle ahead when we try to implement the promise of making a 30% reduction in emissions instead of just a 20% one, but it is still the most serious attempt to curb the growth in global warming emissions anywhere in the world.

My own 'Davies Report,' dealing with the draft directive on the geological storage of CO2, passed along with the rest. The Liberal Democrat Group had agreed to support the package despite its imperfections but I voted against the targets for reducing CO2 emissions from cars. I was responsible for the pre-legislative report and the law approved today is a sad reflection of the hopes of a year ago. Everyone expresses concern for the current state of the car industry but the legislation will affect it as of today by not one jot. We would simply be telling the designers to start making plans for the next generation of more fuel efficient cars.

The votes followed a debate of more than 5 hours in the Parliament at Strasbourg yesterday. (Video clips of some of my contributions can be on www.chrisdaviesmep.org.uk). More than 50 MEPs spoke but to hear the final response from the French environment minister, the environment commissioner and the energy commissioner there were just 4 other members in the chamber. It was discourteous, and it weakened the effectiveness of the Parliament, making it look as though MEPs were just going through the motions.

In truth this is common to many parliaments. Physical attendance of members is usually thin and counts for little; debates can always be followed on television screens in offices while other work is done. But there are two particular problems with the European Parliament.

The first is that the chambers ('hemicycles') in Brussels and particularly in Strasbourg, are vast, so it is difficult to establish the sort of initimacy that is possible in the tiny House of Commons. Personally I always leave my designated seat and go and sit at the front during debates so that I can maintain eye contact with ministers and commissioners. It works quite well I think.

The second is the difficulty of multilingual communication. Of course the interpretation is excellent but it is still comes ove as "interpreter-speak" - difficult and dull to follow. Genuine interchange of views, genuine 'debate', is hard. English being the 'esperanto' of Europe give me a natural advantage, and that coupled with my often direct and sometimes challenging approach gives me a better sense of involvement than most I feel.

We voted also on the Working Time Directive, sadly with big majorities in favour of ending the British opt out. To me, and to most of my Lib Dem colleagues, this is a test for subsidiarity. I introduced a proposal for working time legislation in the House of Commons back in 1997, but I think this is a matter for national parliaments to determine and European harmonisation is inappropriate. The fight on this one is not over yet.

THE MORNING AFTER

The barbed wire around the Council of Ministers' building has been taken away and the nerves of yesterday have been replaced by a pleasurable sense of achievement.

Europe's prime ministers yesterday agreed a series of measures known as the climate change and energy package, intended to reduce CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020 (30% if international agreement is secured) through energy saving, increased renewable energy provision, and investment decisions shaped by the EU's emissions trading scheme.

Messy compromises were needed to win the support necessary, yet the deal still represents the most advanced series of measures agreed anywhere in the world.

But the only thing I was interested in was whether the Council would back the proposals I had succeeded in putting on the table. These were to use 'spare' carbon allowances to fund investment in the development of carbon capture and storage technology.

Snippets of information leaked out from contacts inside the building. At 1pm, news was that the draft summit conclusions called for the use of 200 million allowances, enough to raise €4-5 billion, with each billion estimated to be enough to support one CCS commercial demonstration project somewhere in Europe.

NOT ENOUGH! Better than nothing, of course, but insufficient to take forward the minimum number of projects needed to test and develop the full range of potential technologies. Rude words of despair mixed with consolation were exchanged over mobile phones.

The end-of-summit press conference began. Sarkozy saying the deal was great for Europe (and thereby for French leadership!).

Then a call from the Reuters correspondent in the Council's press room. One diplomat has just said the number had gone up to 300. Story needed to be confirmed. Apparently some detailed negotiations were still going on.

Half an hour later another call. Three sources had now confirmed, would I like to give a quote? "This should raise €6-7 billion," I said, "it's the bare minimum needed but it's enough to do the job."

Inside the meeting, I learnt later, Gordon Brown, pushed hard by John Ashton, the Foreign Secretary's special adviser on climate change and the man who got me involved with CCS in the first place, had insisted that 200 was not enough. Britain was supported by the Netherlands, but these positions were well rehearsed and the intervention of others was needed to break the logjam. Astonishingly it came from Italy (Berlusconi had left by this time). Merkel of Germany came out in favour. Sweden, Romania, and others indicated that 300 at least was acceptable. If the French had put 350 on the table, as the European Parliament had sought, we could well have got it.

So all credit to Gordon Brown. I may have put the ball on the spot, but he kicked it into the goal.

Congratulations filtered through as the news got out. "This is a huge step forward," said John. "It's comparable to the Apollo programme. It makes possible the idea of zero carbon power production using fossil fuels. As a step towards fighting climate change its importance is incalculable."

"Get your daughter, and tell her what her father has done," said Jules Kortenhorst of the European Climate Foundation, bringing tears to my eyes.

I feel choked about some of this. I know that the only reason this financial package has been put in place is because I became the CCS rapporteur in the Parliament last February and I made it my priority to find a way forward on the issue of funding the technology. I didn't have to do it, it wasn't part of the legislative brief, and someone else probably would not have been interested in the challenge.

The result is without any question the greatest political achievement of my life.