Newly built electric power plants in the EU are not adequately equipped to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. This was concluded following research by Wina Graus, who completed her PhD at the Faculty of Geoscienses of the Utrecht University 12th November 2010.

Despite climate change goals many new fossil-fuel power plants are being built and planned in the EU without the possibility to capture and store the greenhouse gas CO₂ produced. As a result, only 15 - 30% of the power plants in 2030 will be capture-ready. Also, it was concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from power plants will show an increase of 10% in 2020 compared to 2005, due to an increase in the number of fossil-fueled power plants and despite efficiency improvements of these newly built plants.

In her thesis Wina Graus looks into developments in capacity, efficiency (percentage of energy use that is converted into electricity) and CO₂ emissions when producing fossil-fueled power. By introducing new efficient production capacity, the efficiency of gas-fired electric power generation in the EU will increase from 34% in 1990 to 50% in 2005. For 2015 a further increase to 54% efficiency is expected. With respect to coal-fired power production there will be an efficiency increase from 34% in 1990 to 38% in 2005, expectedly to 40% in 2015.

The amount of new fossil capacity will cause problems in achieving the climate goals, despite the improvements in efficiency. This is not only the result of limited possibilities to apply carbon capture, but also due to the long lifecycle of fossil-fuel plants, which will reduce opportunities for sustainable energy.

For more information:

Download the report ‘Power of Efficiency: International comparisons of energy efficiency and CO2 emissions of fossil-based power generation'.