In a series of ‘green energy’ announcements, the Government has said that the eight remaining UK coal-fired power plants will be forced to close by 2025, unless they invest huge sums in new technology to dramatically reduce their carbon emissions.
Ministers said the plans, which follow a pledge made in the autumn of last year to phase out coal, will “give investors confidence in new gas-fired power plants” and help to “significantly reduce emissions from the UK’s energy use”.
The Government said it currently expects all UK coal plants, which are already 47 years old on average, to have shut by 2022 anyway, as they became uneconomic — in part due to new environmental rules.
Under one proposed option, coal plants could continue beyond 2025 only if they fit costly — and as yet untested — carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology and limit their total annual emissions to a level equivalent to running for only 40% of the time.
The Government said: “Given the age of the remaining coal plants in Great Britain, it might be considered unlikely that any would choose to invest in retrofitting CCS technology.”
A second option would force coal plants to reduce their emissions to be as clean as new gas plants, but it has not specified a technology to achieve that.
The Government also set out detailed plans to award up to £290 million in annual subsidies to support new renewable energy projects, including offshore wind farms, through an auction in April and indicated that it no longer plans to exempt Scottish islands from its ban on onshore wind subsidies.
Scottish Renewables said developers are “bitterly disappointed” that the Government is not to make funding available for onshore wind on remote Scottish islands, which it had previously said could be treated as a distinct technology and would therefore be exempt from the general ban on onshore wind subsidies, because of the high cost of connecting power to the mainland.
The Government said its current position is that there should be no exemptions, and these projects “should continue to be treated as onshore wind”.
However, it has launched a consultation on the issue, saying that if “new evidence or strong justification” could be provided, then it was “open to considering the possibility of distinct treatment” for the island projects.