News of the EU-China agreement to cooperate on a clean coal demonstration plant was featured in the Financial Times under the headline ‘EU to help China curb coal-fired emissions’. The article features not one but two E3G founding directors.
Firstly, in a discussion of the importance of coal in the Chinese energy mix: “Tom Burke, visiting professor at Imperial College in London, said tackling emissions from coal was essential to combating climate change.
“[Coal] is the key to the door of the overall technology shift needed [to curb] climate change,” he said
The article reports that “Under the proposed agreement, the EU would assist China to build by 2015 a new power station to demonstrate technologies both for carbon capture and storage and for clean coal.”
The innovative nature of this EU-China cooperation lies in the financing: “The cost of the new power station has yet to be established, but it could amount to €500m ($615m, £350m). It is believed the EU would provide the difference in investment between building a standard coal-fired power station and building one equipped to capture and store its carbon emissions.”
And this is where the second E3G founding director makes his appearance: “John Ashton, chief executive of E3G, an environmental consultancy, said:
This shows that the EU is willing to put its money where its mouth is on climate change in order to trigger the major shifts in investment that we will need to build a low-carbon economy.”
