Tim Probert, Power Engineering International magazine
German utility E.ON has shelved plans to build a supercritical 1600 MW coal fired power plant at Kingsnorth in the English county of Kent. E.ON said the recession had lowered demand for electricity in the UK, so the plant was not needed until “around 2016″.
Hmmm. Could this really be the case?
Well, the recession should be over by the time that the plant, originally planned to be commissioned by 2012, would have been operational. And since the beginning of 2008, like other coal plants in Britain’s aged and entirely subcritical fleet, E.ON’s existing 1940 MW Kingsnorth coal plant has been operating at reduced load under the EU’s Large Combustion Plant Directive.
The old plant will shut by the end of 2015, so bringing a new plant online in 2016 may be more profitable.
But electricity prices are rising despite the downturn. With several large thermal and nuclear plants due to close in the next decade, the UK’s load reserves are diminishing. Even the government’s own figures predict small periods of blackout in 2017. The UK needs new capacity regardless of any short-term economic considerations from German utilities.
Some observers see E.ON’s decision as a victory for environmentalists. Kingsnorth, the site of a month-long ‘Climate Camp’ last summer, is something of a cause celebre among the green lobby. In particular Greenpeace, which believes the plant is likely to never be built, has campaigned extensively to prevent the building of Kingsnorth.
However, the crucial factor in E.ON’s decision is carbon capture and storage (CCS). In April, the Department for Energy & Climate Change declared that no new coal fired power plant could be built in the UK without CCS of at least 300 MW net (around 400 MW gross) of capacity from day one.
E.ON had planned to install subsidized CCS at Kingsnorth and was shortlisted for funding from European Energy Programme for Recovery Fund, which is set to allocate €1 billion for CCS schemes across Europe, including €180m to be given to one project in the UK. However, E.ON looks set to miss out on the EU funding, with Powerfuel’s coal gasification (IGCC) plant in Hatfield tipped to get the £156 million for a 900 MW CCS system.
Of course, E.ON’s decision could be an act of brinkmanship in order to get more subsidy from Whitehall. E.ON says that it is committed to CCS, and remains one of three contenders in the running for UK government funding in a CCS demo competition, even though the Kingsnorth ‘delay’ would take the plant completion date beyond the competition deadline of 2014.
E.ON’s decision strengthens my view that all signs are pointing to nuclear in the UK. The UK’s CCS policy may have actually killed off any prospect for new supercritical coal plants at all. CCS is a big risk for a utility - it’s unproven and it’s potentially expensive.
EDF bought British Energy for something like £12 billion last year. That is a very large sum to buy a fleet of soon to be decommissioned power plants. EDF will try to extend the life of the existing fleet while building four new plants. They believe the first one will be operational in time for people to roast their Christmas turkeys in 2017 (a bit optimistic, but just about feasible).
Greenpeace may legitimately claim partial victory over Kingsnorth, but they will lose any battle over nuclear. New plants will be built on existing nuclear sites, where there is scant local opposition because the plants bring jobs to relatively isolated communities.
And last year’s court ruling that Greenpeace protesters were justified in damaging a chimney at the existing Kingsnorth coal plant in the name of climate change has unwittingly served to further the nuclear cause.
