Just four of Europe’s gas-fired power plants have a retirement plan and new projects will increase the continent’s gas generation capacity by 27%, according to analysis from the campaign group Beyond Fossil Fuels.
Campaigners used data from Global Energy Monitor to map Europe’s gas-fired power plants and found a planned retirement date had been set for just 2% of the continent’s capacity.
The analysis found that Italy, the UK and Germany had the greatest planned and installed capacity to make electricity from fossil gas – a fuel that is cleaner than coal but still pumps planet-heating pollutants into the air when it is dug up and burned.
Beatrice Petrovich, an analyst at the climate thinktank Ember, said its modelling of energy transition pathways showed that fossil gas would play a “diminishing role” in the European power generation mix.
“Investment in renewables, grids and clean flexibility today is not just good for mitigating the dangerous increase in temperatures, but will cut bills for consumers and reduce the risk of price spikes connected with a volatile global gas market.”
But while experts see carbon capture as a promising way to clean up some dirty industries, such as cement-making, they are sceptical about it playing a useful role in generating electricity – even to complement renewable energy at times when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.
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