UK Climate News - 31 January 2008

Hutton's department reverses climate and energy policy in six minutes and four wordsA pillar of the government's climate and energy policy collapsed in the face of a single email from German utility giant E.ON, according to Whitehall documents obtained by Greenpeace. The email written two weeks ago - demanded that the Department for Business radically alter the conditions attached to building the UK's first new coal-fired power station in 30 years. Originally the government had asked that the new plant proposed for Kingsnorth in Kent be fitted with so-called 'carbon capture and storage' technology. But when E.ON wrote to the officials admitting the technology will not work and demanding the company be allowed to build a conventional high-emission coal-fired power station instead, it took the government just six minutes to reply agreeing to the request.As a result the government's climate and energy policy based on a faith in the potential of carbon capture technology to deliver 'clean coal' has been exposed as hollow, with huge implications for the UK's carbon emissions targets. In the E.ON email, sent at 8.16am on January 16th, the company says CCS technology at Kingsnorth 'obviously... has no current reference for viability at any scale.' Astonishingly, the email then goes on to insist that cabinet minister John Hutton has 'no right' to withhold approval for a conventional, highly polluting plant and that 'we [E.ON] want to build from summer 2008.'Six minutes after the E.ON email was sent, the Department for Business replies: 'Thanks. I wont include [the previous conditions].'If the plant is built this summer it will emit 8 million tonnes of Co2 every year the same as the 30 least polluting countries in the world combined.Reacting to the revelations in the emails, released under the Freedom of Information Act, Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said:"Now we know who writes policy in the Department for Business. These Whit...

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