Bulletin: UK Carbon Abatement, H2 R&D Proposal

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UK Government Proposes Pound Sterling 40 Million Carbon Abatement, H2 R&D Package

LONDON, JUNE 17 - Billed as a runup to the early-July G8 Summit in Scotland where global warming issues are scheduled to be center stage, the British government this week announced a Pound Sterling 40 million (about $73 million) funding package spread over several years for carbon abatement and hydrogen technologies.

As outlined by the UK’s energy minister Malcolm Wicks in mid-June, the carbon abatement technology (CAT) package of Pound Sterling 25 million ($45.8 million) is expected to include projects to demonstrate carbon dioxide storage in depleted North Sea oil and gas fields, possibly by 2015. Other technologies to be funded under the plan include raising efficiencies and co-firing existing power plants with low-carbon alternatives such as biomass.

The Hydrogen Strategy component of Pound Sterling 15 million ($27.5 million) will include demonstration programs for hydrogen and fuel cells as well as the establishment of a Hydrogen Coordination Unit.

The announcement, released by the government’s Trade and Industry Department (DTI), said “previously disparate efforts on hydrogen and fuel cells R&D will be brought together for the first time within an overall strategy. It will help to ensure that the UK’s participation in international activities such as the International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy is fully effective and benefits both the UK and our international partners.”

The funding proposals are subject to “ the design of appropriate schemes and securing of EC (European Community) State Aid Approval,” according to the release. DTI said it expects to be able to invite calls for proposals towards the end of this year, with funding to be spread over the following 3-4 years.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair who assumed the G8 presidency this year has chosen climate change and the problems of Africa as focus for the meeting July 6-8 of the eight heads of state (France, UK, Italy, US, Germany, Japan, Canada and Russia) at the Gleneagles Hotel, Perthshire, Scotland.

But critics are already charging that the G8 climate change agenda is being undermined at the insistence of the U.S. government. Britain’s “Independent” newspaper said in a June 17 story, “The ‘plan for action’ to tackle climate change for th G8 summit next month has been drastically watered down following Tony Blair’s visit to Washington, according to a leaked draft.”

Similarly, the online Environmental News Service (ENS) reported the same day, the environmental group Friends of the Earth has reacted “with anger” at the content of a draft communique on climate change dated June 14, which appeared to be even weaker than an earlier May 2 leaked draft which itself had no specific targets or timetables. The latest draft “worryingly even calls into question scientists’ warnings that global climate change is already under way,” the story quoted Friends of the Earth.

(The full story will appear in the upcoming July online and print issues of “The Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Letter).

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