VATTENFALL WILL NOT BUILD MORE COAL CAPACITY WITHOUT CCS

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
1/18/13

The operator of Germany’s largest coal plant confirmed this week that it will not invest in any new coal capacity without carbon capture and storage technology. An official at Vattenfall, a utility owned by the Swedish government, said in an interview this week that the company has made a top-down decision not to build new capacity without carbon controls after the completion of two coal projects current under development in Germany. “In Europe, emitting CO2 constitutes a cost. The market price today for CO2 is low, but we do not expect it to stay that way forever. It’s a risk for us that the price will go up considerably, and since we’re a relatively large emitter of CO2, we want to have the option to have CCS,” Karl Bergman, vice president for R&D at Vattenfall told GHG Monitor. “It’s also, of course, a climate concern.” The news was initially reported by the Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri.

The decision is a symbolically significant one from Vattenfall, which operates some of Germany’s largest coal plants. The company, which operates elsewhere in northern Europe and the Baltics, generates about 28 percent of its electricity from coal. The utility has long been a supporter of CCS deployment, but has faced major roadblocks in recent years. Vattenfall folded plans for its flagship major demonstration project at Jänschwalde, southeast of Berlin, in late 2011, citing a lack of political support. As Germany’s last remaining major CCS project, the 300 MW Jänschwalde was caught in a legislative impasse in Germany’s Parliament regarding must-pass European Union measures aimed at establishing a blanket legal and regulatory framework for CO2 transport and storage in the German Parliament.  The €1.5 billion ($2 billion) project also became a lightning rod for local grassroots opposition, with groups like Greenpeace and BUND, the German chapter of Friends of the Earth, helping mobilize citizens groups to reject the technology on the basis of safety and environmental concerns. Local politicians claimed the plant’s 1.7 million tons of CO2 captured annually for onshore storage would induce earthquakes and poison groundwater.

Despite recent setbacks, Bergman said Vattenfall remains “committed” to moving forward on CCS and that the company believes it can gain a competitive edge in the technology moving forward. He said the company made its decision primarily with Germany in mind since that is where most of its coal capacity is located. However, Bergman acknowledged that unless CO2 storage legislation is passed by Germany’s Parliament, not much can be done. “As long as there’s no viable legislation we cannot motivate a project, so we have to wait and see in Germany,” Bergman said.

Vattenfall Continues Pilot CCS Work

Despite folding at Jänschwalde, Vattenfall has continued operating a smaller €70 million (US$ 96 million) 30 MWe pilot project at its Schwarze Pumpe power station, southeast of Berlin. That combined heat and power oxyfuel combustion demonstration project began operations in 2008 and is currently capturing about 75 tonnes of CO2 annually, which it is transporting about 250 miles away via road tanker for sequestration into a depleted gas field. That project is scheduled to operate through 2018. “At Schwarze Pumpe we can see that our technique is working,” Vattenfall spokeswoman Viktoria Raft said. Meanwhile, the utility is also involved with the Ferrybridge pilot plant in northern England, which began operations in late 2011. One of the U.K.’s largest CCS pilots, that project is run by the utility SSE and captures roughly 100 tons of CO2 per day before venting it into the atmosphere.