Tuesday 26 September 2017

Half of Brits back coal with carbon capture technology

Around 50% of the public would back the construction of coal and gas plants with carbon capture and storage technology.

A new survey of 2,009 people by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) also revealed 35% said the government’s first priority for generating power should be enough to meet all domestic and industrial needs.

A total of 32% said the priority should be generating electricity which had the least impact on the climate while 23% said it should focus on the cheapest cost for consumers.

Nearly half (49%) of the public said they thought domestic electricity prices in the UK were higher than in Europe, despite prices in countries such as Denmark, Germany and Italy being higher on average.

Dr Jenifer Baxter, Head of Energy and Environment at IMechE said: “Government has abandoned plans to support carbon capture and storage technology in any significant way, despite studies and many pathways showing that this technology is vital to meeting climate change targets.

“Carbon capture and storage offers huge potential to retroactively decarbonise our existing fleet as well as offering the potential to build new low carbon power plants fuelled by gas. These results show that this sort of negative emissions technology also has broad support from the public."