UK puts brakes on coal fired power plants

All nations at this week’s international climate change talks must leave Warsaw with a clear political understanding that a new global climate deal will be agreed in 2015, UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Edward Davey has told the conference.

Davey said: “This week in Warsaw is absolutely critical to getting a climate deal in 2015. No one should leave this conference without the clear understanding and agreement that from here, we must make sure that when we arrive in Paris in 2015 we are ready to strike a deal."

The minister also announced that the UK will join the US in agreeing to end support for public financing of new coal-fired power plants overseas, except in rare circumstances in which the poorest countries have no feasible alternative. The two governments will work together to secure the support of other countries and Multilateral Development Banks to adopt similar policies.

“It is completely illogical for countries like the UK and the US to be decarbonising our own energy sectors while paying for coal-fired power plants to be built in other countries," Davey commented. “It undermines global efforts to prevent dangerous climate change and stores up a future financial time bomb for those countries who would have to undo their reliance on coal-fired generation in the decades ahead, as we are having to do today.

“Like the US, the UK recognises that there will be exceptions. We need to take account of new technologies such as Carbon Capture Storage and the very poorest countries where there are no alternatives. But many developing countries will soon find solar and similar energy technologies will become cheaper not just cleaner.”

Recognising the increasing impact of climate change on the world’s poorest countries, the UK has also pledged £50m to help more than 860,000 people adapt to those impacts.