Britain Calls for Closing of Coal-Fired Power Plants by 2025
By STANLEY REED
LONDON — The British government on Wednesday called for the closing of all coal-fired power plants in the country by 2025, and proposed that use of the plants be restricted two years before that.
The move, announced in advance of the United Nations conference on climate change set to open in Paris on Nov. 30, appeared aimed at showing Britain as a leader in reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
The push came as the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, said in a report that the bloc would probably achieve its goal of reducing emissions by 20 percent by 2020, compared with levels that existed in 1990.
The commission also forecast that by 2020, Europe would be able to increase to 20 percent from roughly 12 percent the share of energy it consumes from renewable sources like the sun and wind. But the report cautioned that some countries, including Britain, “need to assess whether their policies and tools are efficient and effective” in raising the use of renewable forms of energy.
Analysts say the proposal to close coal-fired power stations could also put pressure on Britain’s electricity providers and on its electricity grid, which has recently shown signs of strain.
“It cannot be satisfactory for an advanced economy like the U.K. to be relying on polluting, carbon-intensive 50-year-old coal-fired power stations,” Amber Rudd, the minister for energy and climate change, said in a statement.
The government will publish its detailed proposals in the spring, she said. Britain would only close the coal plants if the government believed that a shift to other methods of creating energy could be achieved.
“If we take this step,” she said, “we will be one of the first developed countries to deliver on a commitment to take coal off the system.”
Since becoming Britain’s energy and climate change minister this year, Ms. Rudd has shaken up energy policy, cutting back subsidies for renewable forms of energy like wind and solar, arguing that these technologies needed to be more cost-effective.
Coal use in Britain is in decline as utilities close aging plants, but more than 20 percent of the country’s electricity was still being generated from the fuel in the second quarter of this year. By comparison, just over 30 percent of British electricity came from natural gas, 25.3 percent from renewables and 21.5 percent from nuclear plants.
Analysts say that most British coal plants are likely to be shut by the mid-2020s anyway, but they add that forcing the closing of all coal plants within a decade could be too hasty. Earlier, Britain announced plans to build new nuclear plants, but the first is not scheduled to begin operating until 2025. Utilities are also no longer investing in natural gas-fired power plants because of their expense.
“This is a lot of posturing ahead of Paris,” said Deepa Venkateswaran, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in London, referring to the climate conference. “Given that new nuclear is delayed, no one is building new gas,” and the urgency to get rid of the rest of Britain’s coal plants “appears premature,” she said.
Utility executives say that coal remains a reliable, flexible source of power at a time when the electric grid is moving toward greater reliance on sources like wind and solar, which at present are much less reliable than coal. The contributions from wind and solar energy still vary with wind speeds and the amount of sunlight available.
In a sign that the British electrical grid is under some strain, electricity prices spiked briefly this month. National Grid, which operates the system, asked electricity generators to provide more power while requesting industrial users to cut back on consumption.
Speaking in London on Wednesday to an organization of civil engineers, Ms. Rudd said that Britain should be using natural gas instead of coal to generate electricity because gas burns cleaner than coal. With the decline in production of oil from the North Sea, she added, Britain may need to get 75 percent of its natural gas from other countries by 2030, compared with the roughly half that it now imports.
Britain, she said, should be encouraging the building of gas-fired power plants and the exploitation of shale gas, which has been largely stymied by environmental activists and local opposition. She also said that the coal plants would be closed only when the government was convinced that the country could shift effectively to generating gas.
Dieter Helm, a professor of energy politics at the University of Oxford, said that Ms. Rudd was correct to be targeting coal.
“If you are serious about climate change, the first thing to do is get out of coal,” he said in an interview. From this perspective, he said, Britain appears to be more serious about tackling climate change than is Germany.
Germany has invested heavily in wind and solar in recent years, but it still gets about 25 percent of its energy from coal and other solid fuels, according to the European Commission.
英減排碳 10年內 燃煤電廠全關閉
聯合國巴黎氣候峰會月底登場,英國政府宣布在2025年前關閉所有燃煤發電廠,並提議最快自2023年限制燃煤電廠的使用。分析家認為,英國政府有意藉此顯示該國在減少二氧化碳排放的領導地位。
「綠色和平組織」同日發表的調查宣稱,英國若10年內終止燃煤發電降低空汙,10年後的2035年,可減少3800名早產兒夭折、避免50萬個工作天的損失、67億英鎊(約3340億台幣)的相關醫療費用。超過100萬名兒童和170萬名成人也可免於肺部疾病。
長期鼓吹用天然氣讓供電多元化,更主張開採地底頁岩氣的英國能源大臣安柏.拉德女士表示,依賴高汙染的燃煤發電是「墮落的」。她說:「像英國這樣的先進經濟體仰賴已經運轉50年的燃煤電廠,是不可以的。讓我把話說清楚:燃煤發電不是未來。我們要打造適合21世紀的能源基礎建設。」
拉德今年上任以來,刪減太陽能和風力發電的政府補助,要求相關技術的成本效應要更高。她宣示天然氣與核能將是新的發電樞紐,訂出燃煤電廠的落日條款是要讓「計畫興建天然氣電廠的業者知道,不用再擔心會受到燃煤排擠」。
英國共有12座燃煤電廠,已經計畫明年底前要關掉3座,等於未來還有9座要處理。
燃煤發電在英國能源占比正在下降,但今年第二季仍占20%以上,天然氣占30%,再生能源占25.3%,核電占21.5%。
對於政府的宣布,燃煤發電議題的正反陣營都有意見。環保人士抱怨發電重心移往核能和天然氣,而非風力和太陽能。能源業界人士則擔心,英國備載容量低,今秋供電吃緊到全國電網必須緊急要求業者增加供電才避免供電不足,再生能源的供電量不夠穩定,替代燃煤電廠的速度恐怕不夠快。
興建天然氣電廠所費不貲。英國廣播公司報導,英國目前只有一座大型天然氣電廠在興建中,另一座電廠去年獲得補助,但還在找金主。英國宣布要蓋新的核電廠,最快也要到2025年才開始運轉。
倫敦投資管理顧問公司分析師文凱特斯瓦蘭指出,英國政府的宣示其實是在氣候峰會前裝模作樣:「新核電廠的進度延後,也沒有在蓋新的天然氣電廠,趕著讓燃煤電廠除役似乎操之過急。」
長年鼓吹氣候變遷的重要性,並榮獲2007年諾貝爾和平獎的美國前副總統高爾,讚揚英國的宣布是很優秀且具啟發性的先例:「英國是第一個明確定出燃煤電廠關閉期限的主要經濟體。我希望其他國家能效法,用乾淨能源打造永續發展的未來。」
環保團體「地球之友」的資深幹部布洛克批評,「如果英國政府說到做到,關閉燃煤電廠,那的確對氣候變遷影響重大;可是從燃煤改成天然氣發電,好比酒鬼從喝兩瓶威士忌改喝兩瓶波特紅酒。」
原文參照:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/business/energy-environment/britain-to-close-coal-fired-power-stations-by-2025.html
2015-11-20.聯合報.A13.國際.編譯張佑生