John Constable, director of policy and research at the Renewable Energy Foundation

I've just received a press release from the Institution of Chemical Engineers - they're advertising the The 9th European Gasification Conference. It goes like this:

Constable writes: "Industry analysts have for some time been predicting that the lack of reliable capacity in the UK electricity industry would force the Government to seek humiliating exemptions from the EU Large Combustion Plant Directive and its successor legislation in order to keep dirty power stations online that would otherwise be phased out by the directive. The Government has underestimated the impact of the regulations and has failed to recognise that the LCPD would probably require the closure of the bulk of the UK's coal generation fleet by 2016."

Constable also describes the UK's "extreme dependence" on imported gas as "reckless" and warns that ministers have failed to understand that the security of supply contribution from renewables, even if built, would be modest.

"A modern diversified power fleet must consist of nuclear plants, high-efficiency and therefore cleaner coal-fired power stations, including gasifiers predesigned to be ready to capture CO2 for the purpose of enhanced oil (and gas) recovery in the North Sea," writes Constable.
"Dedicated biomass and unlimited co-firing of biomass with coal [that's where I come in!] might also help here, although most of this fuel will have to be imported. Offshore wind will also assist," he adds.

[Copied and pasted from an e-mail from the IChemE].

See, it's not just me who thinks that we need coal. Yey.