Earth Equity News

Carbon Capture Plant Opens in Germany Amid Controversy, Deutsche Welle, September 9, 2008. "Energy giant Vattenfall today launched an 'emissions-free' coal-fired test plant near Berlin using a [carbon sequestration] technology touted as a huge potential breakthrough in the fight against global warming... But environmentalists say the technology uses far more energy than existing power generation and warn that there are no secure long-term storage facilities for the gas. German conservation group BUND on Monday denounced the project as simply a cover allowing Vattenfall to expand its network of conventional coal-fired power stations in Germany. Thorben Becker of BUND said it was still uncertain if CCS worked on a large scale. CCS power stations would obtain 10 per cent less power from the coal than conventional plants did, and it was not clear if there were enough suitable sites to dump the CO2. 'Instead of concentrating on far cheaper renewable energy, Vattenfall is locking itself in for decades to converting climate-damaging brown coal into electricity,' he said. The European Union wants to have 10 or 12 full-scale CCS power stations within the next few years, but it is not clear who will pay the high costs of building and running the plants."