Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
4/17/2015
As the United Kingdom gears up for next month’s Parliamentary elections, manifestos released by the three main British political parties this week illustrate a range of support for future investment in carbon capture and storage, with the Liberal Democrat party voicing the strongest support for continued efforts to get CCS off the ground. The party says in its manifesto that it will “increase research and development and commercialisation support in four key low-carbon technologies where Britain could lead the world: tidal power, carbon capture and storage, energy storage and ultra-low emission vehicles.” Further, the party intends to “regulate to end the use of unabated coal in electricity generation by 2025 because of its high carbon emissions and impact on local air quality, and require any new gas stations built after 2030 to be fitted with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology. We will implement a second phase of CCS projects by 2020,” the document says.
CCS also gets a nod in the Labor party manifesto, which calls for an increase in low-carbon energy generation. “We will work to make Britain a world leader in low carbon technologies over the next decade, creating a million additional green jobs. This aim will be supported by ambitious domestic carbon reduction targets, including a legal target to remove the carbon from our electricity supply by 2030, and a major drive for energy efficiency,” the Labor document says. “We will create an Energy Security Board to plan and deliver the energy mix we need, including renewables, nuclear, green gas, carbon capture and storage, and clean coal.”
On the other end of the spectrum, the Conservative Party signified no intention to further support CCS technology, though the party does acknowledge a need to decarbonize the energy sector. The Conservative manifesto does note large investments in CCS as factors that have contributed to what the party has labeled “the greenest government ever,” but does not indicate an intention to continue such contributions into the future. “We have been the greenest government ever, setting up the world’s first Green Investment Bank, signing a deal to build the first new nuclear plant in a generation, trebling renewable energy generation to 19 per cent, bringing energy efficiency measures to over one million homes, and committing £1 billion for carbon capture and storage,” the Conservative document says. “At home, we will continue to support the UK Climate Change Act. We will cut emissions as cost-effectively as possible, and will not support additional distorting and expensive power sector targets.” The group does call for expansion of support of nuclear and natural gas power generation but does not address the coal industry.
All Parties Promise Strong Show at Paris COP
A common theme across all three manifestos is a promise to work to secure a global climate agreement at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in Paris this December. “We want an ambitious agreement on climate change at the UNFCCC conference in Paris, in December. We will make the case for ambitious emissions targets for all countries, strengthened every five years on the basis of a scientific assessment of the progress towards the below two degree goal. And we will push for a goal of net zero global emissions in the second half of this century, for transparent and universal rules for measuring, verifying and reporting emissions, and for an equitable deal in which richer countries provide support to poorer nations in combatting climate change,” the Labor manifesto says.
The Conservative manifesto states that it will “push for a strong global climate deal later this year – one that keeps the goal of limiting global warming to two-degrees firmly in reach,” and that they will “meet [the country’s] climate change commitments, cutting carbon emissions as cheaply as possible, to save [citizens] money.”
In its Manifesto, the Liberal Democrats call for stronger commitments to reducing emissions within the European Union and globally. The party will “continue pushing for a 50 [percent] reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and the greater use of EU funds to support low-carbon investments, while ensuring the UK meets its own climate commitments and plays a leadership role in efforts to combat climate change,” according to the document.
