Carbon capture to be a must for new coal plants

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - The government is preparing to make carbon capture readiness mandatory for all new fossil fuel power plants to help combat climate change, Business Minister John Hutton said on Monday.

The announcement, which conforms to European Union plans to boost clean coal technology, was part of a speech Hutton gave backing the use of coal to help keep the country's lights on.

Environmentalists were outraged at Hutton's underscoring of the pro-coal stance which came the same day as a new government committee met for the first time tasked with tackling climate change.

"This just highlights the incoherence of government climate policy," said Russell Marsh of the Green Alliance.

"On the very same day Chancellor Alistair Darling spoke of the importance of the new Climate Change Committee and the challenge of meeting UK emissions targets, his cabinet colleague John Hutton was voicing his support for new, unabated coal power stations," he added.

The government has always said fossil fuels will have to play a part, along with new nuclear power plants and renewables like wind and waves, in the nation's future energy mix.

It has also pointed to the increasing reliance on imported gas supplies as being a potential source of instability and noted that resorting to the world's plentiful supplies of coal but using clean generation technology was unavoidable.

"Fossil fuels will continue to play an important role in ensuring the flexibility of the electricity generation system," Hutton told the right-wing Adam Smith Institute.