In the absence of the definitive funding for a large-scale capture demonstration program, the European Commission (EC) proposes a new investment for carbon capture and storage. According to Ecologistas en Acción, trough the observation of the five groups of approved programs, it seems reasonable to conclude that the EC renounces to the capture in the existing power plants, supporting pre-combustion capture and the big fraud of “capture ready” power plants, which is even more unacceptable.

For its promoters, the more easily available mechanism for the financing of a large-scale capture demonstration program would be resort to the new entrants» reserve of the European Union Emission Trading Scheme allowances (an emission allowance is the equivalent to one tonne of CO2).

They hope to obtain about 12,500 million Euros with this mechanism, but this objective is more and more difficult to achieve, since the European Parliament has reduced to 300 the million permissions available for capture, and the price of the ton of carbon has decreased from a predicted €25 to 8.5.
Meanwhile, the EC “as part of the ongoing implementation of the EU recovery plan endorsed by the European Council in December 2008” has presented proposals to invest in key energy and Internet broadband infrastructure projects, between which the carbon capture and storage is included. They propose a total of €3,500 million, €1,250 million of whom would be invested in fulfilling this aim. The rest would be invested in offshore wind projects (€500 million), and gas and electricity interconnection projects (€1,750 million).

The five capture projects groups, each one of them has been assigned €250 million, have been presented by Germany, Holland, Poland, Spain (with Portugal) and the United Kingdom. By observing them, it seems reasonable to suppose that, on the one hand, the EC renounces to the capture in the existing power plants, and on the other hand, it supports mainly pre-combustion capture systems or gas oxygen systems.

The first ones extract the CO2 before the combustion, trough the gasification of fossil fuels, producing a “synthesis gas” which is basically a mixture of carbon monoxide, methane and hydrogen. The ELCOGAS plant in Puertollano is an example of this type of Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plant. These kinds of projects, approved by the Commission, are those of Huerth in Germany, Eemshaven in Holland, and Hatfield in the United Kingdom.

The second ones burn fossil fuels with a 95% of pure oxygen instead of air. It causes an exit gas with high CO2 concentrations (higher than 80%). This exit gas can be condensed and compressed for its transportation and storage. Among these kinds of projects, approved by the Commission, are those of Jaenschwalde, in Germany, and the one of Compostilla, in Spain. Before we can consider this technology viable, it is necessary to overcome some important difficulties associated to the combustion control and oxygen production cost.

Regarding the post-combustion projects, in which the exit gas usually contains up to 14% of CO2, that needs to be separated, they put their hopes on chemical absorption with amines, such as monoetanolamine (MEA), the process currently being use, instead of processes of capture by carbonation, as the proposed one by the National Institute of Coal.

However, according to Ecologistas en Acción, what is more unacceptable is their support to the big fraud of “capture ready” power plants, like the United Kingdom's projects in Kingsnorth, Longannet and Tilbury. These kinds of projects do not present any capture process but, as the International Energy Agency suggested in 2007, they could include the CO2 capture if the economic and normative conditions are suitable for doing it. With this option they would try to avoid risks to the investors and avoiding thus the construction paralysis of new coal thermal power plants.

Who support the capture suggest that the “capture ready” coal power plants will be modified, although Ecologistas en Acción considers that this is not necessarily the true. The key factor to modify them, once started, is that the options for the capture were commercially available at a rough cost to the one fixed at the beginning, since, while it is much economical to buy CO2 emission permissions, instead of reducing emissions, the improvements in existing coal electrical power plants will simply not take place.