Will the UK phase out coal in a decade?

[GliderGuider]

Will the UK phase out coal in a decade?

The government is wrong to assume its existing policies will be enough to phase out coal power in the UK, analysts have told the Guardian.

Minister for energy and climate change Andrea Leadsom said this week that her department expected unabated (meaning without carbon capture) coal would make up just 1% of the country’s electricity generation by 2025.

Referring to a Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) report from September last year, Leadsom said the decline would occur “as a result of deployment of low carbon alternatives, the cost of generation and the investment needed to meet new pollution abatement standards”.

But this prediction is not reinforced by a mandatory end date for electricity generation from coal. Despite rhetoric from the prime minister and his ministers that coal needs to go, the government has been reluctant to set a timeline for the phase-out of the most carbon intensive fossil fuel.

Robert Gross, director of Imperial College’s Centre for Energy Policy and Technology, said relying on existing policies and the market for cleaner technologies left the door open for coal generation to continue beyond 2030.

“There’s a considerable range of uncertainty about how much coal will be retained on the system. And if it’s at the upper end of the range of possibilities then its going to absolutely blow the carbon budget,” he said.

As I've been saying in more general terms for the last decade...

[pscot]

1. If we can't stop burning coal

there is no hope at all. Humans have no future on this planet. The election of '14 turned on the coal country vote. from the Carolinas to Wyoming there are millions whose living depends on coal and who voted in people who serve coal. Coal needs to be banned and burning it should be made a criminal offense. The coal operators are public enemy Number One, about a half step ahead of the tar sands cabal..