UK coal power plants should be phased out, says David Cameron

David Cameron believes existing coal-fired power plants in the UK should be phased out in the next 10 or 15 years, while new coal-fired stations must be fitted with carbon capture and storage technology.

In his speech to the UN climate summit in New York, however, he omitted the key phase-out pledge. But his aides said this was only owing to having to shorten the speech at the last minute, and the UK team at the UN in New York tweeted Cameron as making the announcement.

New coal-fired power stations will have to use carbon abatement technology, under current plans, but the phase-out of coal has not been stated explicitly before. Last week a Department of Energy and Climate Change spokesperson refused to answer a direct question on whether a phase-out was government policy.

No 10 said the policy was not new, however. European Union rules on pollutants from coal-fired power stations, known as the large combustion plant directive (LCPD), will mean that ageing coal plants will have to be fitted with cleaning technology, and this is likely to cause most or all of them to come out of service within the next decade and a half. Many are also coming to the end of their useful lives.

Despite its outward stance against coal, the government is known to be lobbying the EU to bend the LCPD for one of the UK’s most polluting plants at Aberthaw in Wales.

A senior Tory familiar with the discussions said there was “nothing sinister” in Cameron’s omission of the pledge, and that the policy would stand.

But green campaigners were concerned at the apparently blasé way Cameron had scribbled out a major low-carbon policy announcement.

Greenpeace UK energy campaigner Louise Hutchins said: “The pledge to end dirty coal that David Cameron seems to have casually dropped from his summit speech wasn’t just a footnote but the keystone of any serious policy to clean up Britain’s energy system.

“The huge amounts of coal burnt by the big energy companies isn’t just damaging our health and climate, it’s also sucking oxygen out of the clean tech sector that is booming around the world.

“Cameron should use the next available opportunity to finally announce a clear expiry date for our polluting old coal plants, and Labour should do the same.”

The coalition this year voted against an opposition amendment that would have resulted in a clearer policy on phasing out coal.