Posts Tagged "CO2"

Pilot plant at Schwarze Pumpe

A frequently asked question is if Vattenfall can really claim to care about the environment when emitting so much CO² from coal-fired power plants. 

Our view is that because we are a part of the problem we want to be a part of the solution, and we are determined to lower the CO² emissions. Our ambition is to be carbon neutral in 2050. We will do this in several ways.

 
In the longer term, we want to clean the emissions from CO² by using carbon capture and storage technology, CCS. The CCS technology is available today, and reduces CO² emissions by more than 90 percent. But it is still too expensive compared to other sources of energy. A price tag on CO², however, would make CCS competitive.

 
In the shorter term, we plan to co-fire the power plants with biomass, which will also lower CO² emissions. But biomass also needs political support, such as CO² price tags or subsidies, to be economically viable.

 
Today we are replacing old coal plants with new ones using the latest technology. These plants have significantly better efficiency and therefore need less coal to produce the same amount of energy.

 
Coal is today a very cheap source of energy and is the base of economic growth for countries such as Poland, not to mention China. These and other countries have great natural resources of coal and few alternatives.

 
The bottom line is – we are stuck with coal for a long time. But the problem is not really the coal itself, but the greenhouse gas emissions. To curb climate change, there has to be a price tag on CO².