Earth Equity News

Germany Soon to Debut Its First Carbon Sequestration Pilot Project. By Roger Harrabin, BBC News, September 3, 2008. "Beneath the gargantuan grey boiler towers of Schwarze Pumpe power station which pierce the skies of northern Germany, a Lilliputian puzzle of metal boxes and shining canisters is about to mark a moment of industrial history. This mini power plant is a pilot project for carbon [sequestration], the first coal-fired plant in the world ready to capture and store its own CO2 emissions. Next week the pilot -- an oxyfuel boiler -- will be formally commissioned... The plant operators, Vattenfall, have worked furiously for two years to get the pilot running... [funding] the 70m-euro project themselves... But big questions hang over this technology... particularly over where the CO2 will be stored and who will pay the high costs of building and running the CCS plants... 'Our concern is that this technology is used to justify the construction of more coal power plants,' says Tobias Munchmeyer [of Greenpeace]. 'It's too expensive, it will come too late and it will divert money from the real solutions, renewable energies and energy efficiency.' The EU wants to see 10-12 full-scale power plants demonstrating CO2 capture within the next few years. But although a number of other firms will soon join the race with pilot projects, no full-scale CCS coal plant has yet been commissioned. The British government has promised a decision in October on how it will fund a full-scale CCS in the UK... but questions over CCS funding in Europe are as yet unresolved by the European Commission and the European Parliament."