Rising Tide Australia

Britain's leading green commentator, George Monbiot, goes head-to-head with the chief executive of oil giant Shell, tackling ethics, greenwash advertising, renewable energy investments and gas-flaring in Nigeria

For a while it seemed that Shell had stopped pretending. The advertisements that filled the newspapers in 2006, featuring technicians with perfect teeth and open-necked shirts explaining how they were saving the world, vanished. After being slated by environmentalists for greenwash, after two adverse rulings by the Advertising Standards Authority, Shell appeared to have accepted the inescapable truth that it was an oil company with a minor sideline in alternative energy, and that there was no point in trying to persuade people otherwise.

The interview I conducted with its chief executive, Jeroen van der Veer, broadcast on the Guardian's website today, contains what appears to be an interesting admission. I asked him whether Shell had stopped producing ads extolling its investments in renewable energy. Van der Veer does not express himself clearly at this point, but he seems to admit that his company's previous advertising was not honest.

"If we are very big in oil and gas and we are so far relatively small in alternative energies, if you then every day only make adverts about your alternative energies and not about 90% of your other activities I don't think that - then I say transparency, honesty to the market, that's nonsense." So, I asked, Shell did not intend to return to that kind of advertising? "Probably not," he told me. "I'm very much: keep your feet on the ground, tell them who you are and explain why you are who you are."

But since the interview was filmed, Shell's messianic tendencies appear to have resurfaced. In December the company ran a series of ads in the Guardian suggesting again that it had come to save the world. "Tackling climate change and providing fuel for a growing population seems like an impossible problem, but at Shell we try to think creatively," one boasted. It features a diagram of a human brain, divided into sections labelled "fuel from algae", "fuel from straw", "fuel from woodchips", "hydrogen fuels", "windfarm", "gas to liquids" and "coal gasification". This suggests progress of a kind, in that the company is acknowledging that it sometimes dabbles in fossil fuels, but its core business - oil - and its massive investments in tar sands extraction are missing from the corporate mind. Could Shell be having a senior moment?

The confusion deepens when you watch its latest publicity film. It's called Clearing the Air, and it does just the opposite. It is supposed to tell an inspirational tale of discovery, but the script and the acting are so gobsmackingly bad that it inspires you only to rip your clothes off and run screaming down the street. The lasting impression it leaves is that Shell's staff are chaotic and incompetent. Perhaps the clean-cut corporate clones featured in the ads of 2006 put people off.

Jeroen van der Veer is neither an incompetent nor an automaton. He is charming, friendly and smart. But he refused to answer some of the questions I had prepared.

Reading Shell's reports and publicity material, I kept stumbling on an absence. In 2000, the company boasted that it would be investing $1bn in renewable energy between 2001 and 2005. But since then it appears to have produced no figures for its renewables budget. The company now claims that it is "investing significantly in wind energy", but it doesn't say what "significantly" means. Of the 10 windfarms listed on its website, only one appears to be in the planning or development stage: the others are already in operation. Where is the evidence of new money? When Shell pulled out of Britain's biggest windfarm, the London Array, last year, did this represent the end of its major investments?

I asked Van der Veer a simple question - 15 times. (Only a few of these attempts feature in the edited film.) "What is the value of your annual investments in renewable energy?" He waffled, changed the subject, admitted that he knew the figure, then flatly refused to reveal it. Nor could he give me a convincing explanation of why he wouldn't tell me, claiming only that "those figures are misused and people say it is too small", and it "is not the right message to give to the people". It strikes me that there is only one likely reason for these evasions: that Shell's spending on renewables has fallen sharply from the figure it announced in 2000. It's a fair guess that the current investment would look microscopic by comparison to its spending on the Canadian tar sands, and would make a mockery of its new round of advertising. I challenge Shell - for the 16th time - to prove me wrong.

Nor would Van der Veer give me a straight answer to another straight question: "Is there any investment you would not make on ethical grounds?" I asked this six times. He was unable to furnish me with an example. It's not hard to see why. As well as exploiting the tar sands, which means destroying forest and wetlands, polluting great quantities of water and producing more CO2 than conventional petroleum production, Shell is still flaring gas in Nigeria, at great cost to both local people and the global climate. It has been fiercely criticised for its secret negotiations with the Iraqi government, which led last year to the first major access for a western company to Iraq's gas reserves. It is prospecting for oil in some of the Arctic's most sensitive habitats.

All this makes my question difficult to answer. Aside from the greenwash, it is not easy to spot the practical difference between this civilised, progressive company and the Neanderthals at Exxon.

Like all oil companies, Shell simply follows the opportunities. Shut out of the richest fields by state companies, struggling to extract the dregs from its declining reserves, it has been turning to ever more difficult oil extraction, some of which lies beneath rare and fragile ecosystems. When the price of oil was high, it announced massive investments in the tar sands. Now the price has dropped again, it has cancelled further spending. It has even less of an incentive to invest in renewables. Shell does what the market demands.

I don't blame Shell or Van der Veer for this: they are discharging their duty to their shareholders. I do blame them for creating the impression that the company has a different agenda, and I blame governments for allowing them to drift into whatever fields they find profitable, regardless of the consequences for people or the environment.

On this issue Jeroen van der Veer and I agree. Oil companies, he says, should not seek to determine a country's energy mix: that is for the government to decide.

Saving the biosphere, in other words, cannot be left to goodwill and greenwash: the humanity of pleasant men like Van der Veer will always be swept aside by the imperative to maximise returns. Good people in these circumstances do terrible things. Companies like Shell will pour big money into alternative energy only when more lucrative or immediate opportunities are blocked. Where is the government that is brave enough to block them?

monbiot.com

• Royal Dutch Shell
• Oil and gas companies
• Green business
• Alternative energy
• Fossil fuels
• Energy
• Climate change

Government consultants have been accused of miscalculating the costs of a project to generate vast amounts of green electricity in the Severn estuary, promoting a 10 mile-long tidal barrier strongly backed by ministers in preference to a scheme that engineers and environmentalists say is far less damaging.

The US engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff has been hired by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) to assess technologies that could meet, from the Severn estuary, up to 7% of the electricity consumption of England and Wales. Its feasibility study for the estuary, which has the second highest tidal range in the world, has been sent to ministers, who will soon announce a shortlist of potential schemes based on the assessment.

Finding a way to harness the power of the Severn's tides is important as it would represent a big step towards Britain's target of generating 35% of all electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

Sources in Decc say the firm favourite is the 10-mile barrier, which would span the entire estuary and is costed at about £14bn. Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) said the barrier could generate between 5GW and 8.6GW of renewable electricity at a cost of about 3p/kWh, but that it would impede shipping and lead to permanent flooding over more than 100 miles of shoreline.

Ministers have already called the scheme "visionary" and a "trailblazer for clean, green energy".

But correspondence seen by the Guardian shows that a row erupted between PB and a company promoting a scheme that environmental groups and other engineers claim would be far less damaging, as well as cheaper and more efficient.

Tidal Electric wants to generate electricity by using tidal lagoons built on the estuary floor from rock. Up to 13 lagoons would be dotted around the Severn estuary, not across it. These would trap water at high tide and release it later through electricity-generating turbines.

Studies carried out by the engineers AS Atkins, for Tidal Electric, have suggested that the lagoons could generate twice as much power, per square mile impounded, than the barrage, and therefore generate about 25-40% more energy without damaging the shoreline.

However, the plan sent by PB to ministers says the tidal lagoon option would be eight times more expensive than the barrage scheme and would not generate as much power.

But Peter Ullman, chief executive of Tidal Electric, said: "PB has made huge miscalculations. They have submitted [to ministers] cost-numbers on power from tidal lagoons that are roughly 800% higher than all the previous studies of tidal lagoon power conducted by UK engineering giant WS Atkins and corroborated by AEA Technology, Ofgem and Rothschild Bank. They have arrived at their extraordinarily high numbers by ignoring the technology developer's design parameters and introducing their own design."

One key issue is that Tidal Electric plans to site the lagoons in shallow water, while PB assumes they would be built – at a higher cost – in deeper water.

Tidal Electric is backed by many leading environment groups, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and Friends of the Earth, as well as a vocal west country lobby, which believes a barrage would be ecologically and socially disastrous. According to the Bristol-based group Stop the Barrage Now a barrage would add to local flooding, reduce fish stocks, damage bird life and destroy the Severn bore, as well as ruin mudflats across an area of more than 77 sq miles. They say a barrage would impede shipping, adversely affecting ports such as Bristol, Sharpness, Gloucester and Cardiff, and put at risk thousands of jobs.

A PB spokesman said: "We are unable to comment on Mr Ullman's complaint, but it is important to stress that during the selection process all options have been technically assessed to a common engineering and cost baseline.

"The same technical and energy yield approach has been applied to all options and the process and outcomes have been subject to peer review. The selection process is reviewed by an independent panel of experts appointed by Decc."

In correspondence with Tidal Electric, seen by the Guardian, PB executives note that the consultation will continue: "There [will be] ample opportunity for dialogue to continue even though the public consultation documents are in the final stages of preparation. The public consultation process provides you with the opportunity to formally respond to the consultation documents, which will include our appraisal of the long-listed schemes. If the offshore lagoon concept is shortlisted, specific optimisation of proposals will be carried out in the next phase, which will require further dialogue."

A range of barrage studies were made between 1974 and 1987 at a cost of £65m, out of which a specific Severn barrage scheme was drawn up by the Severn Tidal Power Group. A revised report was published in 2002 but all the plans were rejected at the time as being too expensive or too ecologically damaging.

• Wildlife
• Wave, tidal and hydropower
• Conservation
• Renewable energy
• Energy
• Alternative energy
• Green politics

Propellers on ships have been tried and tested for centuries in the rough and unforgiving environment of the sea: now this long-proven technology will be used in reverse to harness clean energy from the UK's powerful tides.

The tides that surge around the UK's coasts could provide up to a quarter of the nation's electricity, without any carbon emissions. But life in the stormy seas is harsh and existing equipment – long-bladed underwater wind turbines – is prone to failure.A Welsh renewable energy company has teamed up with ship propulsion experts to design a new marine turbine which they believe is far more robust.

Cardiff-based Tidal Energy Limited will test a 1MW tidal turbine off the Pembrokeshire coast at Ramsey Sound, big enough to supply around 1,000 homes. Their DeltaStream device, invented by marine engineer Richard Ayre while he was installing buoys in the marine nature reserve near Pembrokeshire, will be the first tidal device in Wales and become fully operational in 2010.

To ensure the propeller and electricity generation systems were as tough as possible, the tidal turbine's designers worked with Converteam, a company renowned for designing propulsion systems for ships. "They've put them on the bottom of the Queen Mary ... and done work for highly efficient destroyers, which is exactly the same technology that we're looking at here," said Chris Williams, development director of DeltaStream.

DeltaStream's propellers work in reverse to a ship's propulsion system – the water turns the blades to generate electricity – but the underlying connections between blades and power systems are identical to those on the ship.

Tidal streams are seen as a plentiful and predictable supply of clean energy, as the UK tries to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Conservative estimates suggest there is at least 5GW of power, but there could be as much as 15GW – 25% of current national demand.

A single DeltaStream unit has three propeller-driven generators that sit on a triangular frame. It weighs 250 tonnes, but is relatively light compared with other tidal systems which can be several times heavier. The unit is simple to install and can be used in closely packed units at depths of at least 20m. Unlike other tidal turbine systems, which must be anchored to the sea floor using piles bored into the seabed, DeltaStream's triangular structure simply sits on the sea floor.

Duncan Ayling, head of offshore at the British Wind Energy Association and a former UK government adviser on marine energy, said that one of the biggest issues facing all tidal-stream developers is ease of installation and maintenance of their underwater device. "Anything you put under the water becomes expensive to get to and service. The really good bit of the DeltaStream is that they can just plonk it in the water and it just sits there."

Another issue that has plagued proposed tidal projects is concern that the whirling blades could kill marine life. But Williams said: "The blades themselves are thick and slow moving in comparison to other devices, so minimising the chance of impact on marine life."

The device also has a fail-safe feature when the water currents become too powerful and threaten to destroy the turbines by dragging them across the sea floor – the propellers automatically tilt their orientation to shed the extra energy.

Pembrokeshire businessman and sustainability consultant Andy Middleton said: "People are increasingly recognising how serious global warming really is, and in St David's we are keen to embrace our responsibility to minimise climate change. DeltaStream is developing into a perfect example of the technology that fills the need for green energy and has the added benefit of being invisible and reliable."

The country's first experimental tidal turbine began generating electricity in Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland last year, built by Bristol-based company Marine Current Turbines. SeaGen began at about 150kW, enough for around 100 homes, but has now reached 1,200kW in testing. It had a setback early in its test phase, with the tidal streams breaking one of the blades in July.

• Energy
• Wave, tidal and hydropower
• Renewable energy
• Alternative energy

Countries across Europe yesterday began to report declining gas supplies as the bitter dispute between Russia and Ukraine over energy contracts intensified.

An emergency meeting of European Union envoys will be held tomorrow in the hope of resolving the row, which some experts fear has again highlighted the risks of energy dependency on Russia. Bohdan Sokolovsky – an economic aide to the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko – warned that if Russia continued to refuse to ship gas allocated for Ukraine, European countries could see major shortfalls within 10 to 15 days.

The Czech Republic said its supplies had dropped by 5% since the start of the stand-off over unpaid bills and price levels on New Year's Day. Prague, which has just taken over the EU presidency, resisted calls to get involved directly in the row, but is coming under increasing pressure to do so. The EU receives about 25% of its gas from pipelines that cross Ukraine and has demanded that Russia honours existing transit and supply contracts.

The stand-off between Russia and Ukraine shows little sign of being resolved after Kiev accused Moscow of manipulating gas distribution and Moscow retaliated by raising the price.

Elsewhere Romania, which takes 40% of its natural gas from Russia, said its gas supplies were 30% down on normal levels, and it was having to draw supplies from storage facilities. The government called an emergency meeting to discuss its options. Poland said it was dependent on deliveries from Belarus to make up for a shortfall of 11%. Hungary and Bulgaria also experienced drops in supply.

Turkey said supplies had fallen only slightly, while France and Germany reported no problems. But a spokesman for the German gas importer, E.ON Ruhrgas, said there has been a decrease in pressure in the pipeline through Ukraine.

While consumers have not been affected, EU energy companies said that would only continue if the dispute did not last so long that storage supplies ran low. After a similar dispute in 2006, many European energy firms built up gas reserves.

Russia accused Ukraine of stealing a sixth of the gas supplies destined for Europe. "In total over the past day European consumers have not received 50m cubic metres," Sergei Kupriyanov, spokesman for the Russian gas company Gazprom said, adding that Ukraine still owed Gazprom $614m (£422m) for gas supplies delivered last year. The company said it was now increasing supplies through routes which bypass Ukraine.

But Ukraine accused Moscow of distorting the picture by cutting flows via a key pipeline by more than 50%. The Ukrainian state energy company, Naftogaz, said Moscow was threatening Europe's energy security. "Naftogaz considers the actions of Gazprom as threatening the energy security of Ukraine and Europe which could bring unpredictable consequences for the entire gas transit system of Europe," it said in a statement.

Gazprom showed that it was not prepared to compromise over Ukraine's plea for a reduction in prices.

Alexei Miller, Gazprom's chief executive, said that as Ukraine had turned down a proposed price of $418 per 1,000 cubic metres, he would now raise the price to $450.

Oleksander Shlapak, the first deputy chief of staff of president Yushchenko, urged the EU to intervene. "Europe talks of real gas blackmail from the Russian side," Shlapak told Reuters. "Today, the front of that blackmail has moved to Ukraine.

"If Europe does not understand that and does not help us get out of this situation, then it can expect a more aggressive position from Russia on gas and other issues," he said.

The 2006 dispute led to urgent calls for the EU to diversify its energy supplies but it has not managed to break free from its dependence on Russian gas.

Russia and Ukraine have said they plan to bring cases against each other in the arbitration court in Stockholm.

• Ukraine
• Russia
• Energy
• Europe
• Poland

Just when you might have thought it was ethically sound to unleash a nuclear attack on a nearby city, along comes a pesky scientist and points out that atomic warfare is bad for the climate. According to a new paper in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, even a very limited nuclear exchange, using just a thousandth of the weaponry of a full-scale nuclear war, would cause up to 690m tonnes of CO2 to enter the atmosphere – more than UK's annual total.

The upside (kind of) is that the conflict would also generate as much as 313m tonnes of soot. This would stop a great deal of sunlight reaching the earth, creating a significant regional cooling effect in the short and medium terms – just like when a major volcano erupts. Ultimately, though, the CO2 would win out and crank up global temperatures an extra few notches.

The paper's author, Mark Z Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, calculated the emissions of such a conflict by totting up the burn rate and carbon content of the fabric of our cities. "Materials have the following carbon contents: plastics, 38–92%; tyres and other rubbers, 59–91%; synthetic fibres, 63–86%; woody biomass, 41–45%; charcoal, 71%; asphalt, 80%; steel, 0.05–2%. We approximate roughly the carbon content of all combustible material in a city as 40–60%."

But why would a Stanford engineer bother calculating such a thing? Given that the nuclear exchange would also kill up to 17 million people, who's going to be thinking about the impact on global warming?

The purpose of the paper is to compare the total human and environmental costs of a wide range of different power sources, from solar and wind to nuclear and biofuels. One of the side-effects of nuclear power, the report argues, is an increased risk of nuclear war: "Because the production of nuclear weapons material is occurring only in countries that have developed civilian nuclear energy programs, the risk of a limited nuclear exchange between countries or the detonation of a nuclear device by terrorists has increased due to the dissemination of nuclear energy facilities worldwide."

"As such," Jacobson continues, "it is a valid exercise to estimate the potential number of immediate deaths and carbon emissions due to the burning of buildings and infrastructure associated with the proliferation of nuclear energy facilities and the resulting proliferation of nuclear weapons … Although concern at the time of an explosion will be the deaths and not carbon emissions, policy makers today must weigh all the potential future risks of mortality and carbon emissions when comparing energy sources."

I'm not a huge fan of nuclear energy, and I agree that a large roll-out of atomic power must on some level increase the likelihood of nuclear terrorism or war. However, it does strike me as faintly absurd to try and quantify this risk – particularly the way Jacobson does it. Here's how he crunches the numbers:

"If one nuclear exchange as described above occurs over the next 30 years, the net carbon emissions due to nuclear weapons proliferation caused by the expansion of nuclear energy worldwide would be 1.1–4.1g CO2 per kWh, where the energy generation assumed is the annual 2005 generation for nuclear power multiplied by the number of year being considered."

In other words, if nuclear power leads one exchange of fifty 15 kilotonne nuclear devices over 30 years, then that equates to 4.1 grams of extra CO2 for each kilowatt of nuclear energy produced. Why, you might ask, has Jacobson chosen one exchange, 50 nuclear war heads and 30 years? Good question. Those figures, as far as I can tell, are entirely arbitrary, and as such I'm rather surprised that the Royal Society for Chemistry are prepared to publish them in their journal.

Putting those doubts to one side for a moment, it's interesting to note that nuclear looks very bad in the report even if you ignore the warfare component of the carbon footprint. Far more serious (by a factor of 15 to 25) is nuclear's opportunity cost: the emissions savings lost during the decades of planning and building of each nuclear station. Once again, however, there's no explanation about how these figures are calculated, so it's hard to know whether they're valid.

Either way, nuclear doesn't come out as badly as first- or second-generation biofuels. These, the author remarks, are "ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste," and may actually "worsen climate and air pollution" relative to fossil fuels. Carbon capture and storage also gets a thumbs down. By contrast, wind, solar and marine energy score well on the wide-ranging criteria, which include carbon emissions, land demands and even thermal pollution.

As the first study to compare energy sources in so many different ways, the report is both interesting and welcome. Unfortunately, it's unlikely to make much of an impact – not just because there's no mention of the economics of each energy source, but because the half-baked quantification of nuclear war's climate impact makes the whole study seem somewhat unconvincing.

• Nuclear power
• Energy
• Carbon emissions

Low oil prices and the credit crunch are threatening to stall the green revolution. The value of crude has dropped from a summer high of nearly $150 a barrel to below $40, taking the wind out of the sails of turbine manufacturers and others ­trying to build low-carbon alternatives.

Jeremy Leggett, founder and executive chairman of Solarcentury, says: "Talk of the death of renewables is premature but clearly big solar farms and wind projects are being cancelled. Everything is suf­fering in the current climate but its my contention that the low oil price is a temporary thing and the growth of renew­ables will resume."

Michael Liebreich, chief executive of information provider New Energy Finance, says his leading index of clean-technology companies has fallen from a high of 450 points 12 months ago to 175 points, hit by a triple whammy of lower oil prices, higher costs of capital and fear of more speculative start-up businesses.

But he too is confident that the sector can bounce back. "There was no doubt that there was a certain amount of irrational exuberance over the low-carbon economy. No industry in history has kept up the kind of 40% compound growth rates being ascribed to clean tech so share prices had run up too far and it was time for a correction."

Clean-tech and renewables stocks have been struggling with more than just sentiment. Indian-based wind turbine manufacturer Suzlon Energy, which has seen its share price plunge by 90% this year, has also been hit by malfunctions and the kind of teething problems it says is are inevit­able with new types of technology.

Wind developers in the US have been cutting back in the face of tough new conditions. FPL Group, the US's largest wind-power operator, is cutting its ­spending this year by nearly a quarter to $5.3bn (£3.7bn) and new wind-power generation from 1,500 to 1,100 megawatts.

Confidence in the sector has also been rattled by T Boone Pickens, a veteran oil man who delighted environmentalists with a very public conversion when he promised to build the world's largest wind farm in Texas. He slammed on the brakes in November on the basis that lower oil prices had changed the economics of a scheme that would have powered 1.3m homes.

However the US wind sector has generally been faring better than the British one, thanks to tax breaks. Shell and BP have made it clear they are no longer interested in pursuing UK farms when the investment numbers stack up much better across the Atlantic.

The decision by Shell to pull out of the London Array wind farm was a particular blow to British confidence. The project has been billed as the biggest offshore scheme of its kind in the world but the oil company said the margins were too thin, leaving E.ON of Germany and Dong Energy of Denmark to go it alone.

Anton Milner, the chief executive of Q-Cells, the world's largest manufacturer of solar cells, cut earnings forecasts recently after being hit by what he described as a "flood" of cancellations from developers of solar-power projects struggling to raise finance. The US manufacturer Evergreen Solar has since delayed an $800m new factory in Asia that would have manufactured enough solar cells to power a city of 500,000 people.

But most industry figures are convinced that though the threat of global recession is slowing down the industry, the future remains bright enough, especially with a new figure taking over the White House. Liebreich says his clean-tech index has seen an "Obama bounce", rising from a low of 130 to 175 on the back of optimism about the incoming president's policies.

A raft of radical political appointments – such as Nobel physics laureate Steven Chu as energy secretary – has convinced environmentalists that Barack Obama is serious about his stated aim of hastening progress towards a low-carbon economy with a green New Deal that will reduce his country's dependence on imported oil.

A quarterly review of climate change-related business opportunities just published by analysts at HSBC says governments are increasingly active. "The engagement of governments has grown globally," they say. "Across the political spectrum there is now more recognition that climate change is a genuine long-term global issue with real growth potential."

Martin Wright, managing director of Marine Current Turbines, says no one should expect oil and gas prices to stay low. "Vladimir Putin has already said the era of cheap gas is over and no one knows when peak oil really will come about. So we can expect enormous price volatility, which all points to the need for Britain to develop an independent low-carbon alternative."

• Renewable energy
• Energy
• Oil
• US economy
• US domestic policy
• Energy
• Alternative energy
• Solar power
• Wind power
• Fossil fuels

On the banks of the Firth of Forth, the Longannet power station dominates the wintry horizon, a massive box in the shadow of its skyscraper chimney stack.

Conceived more than 40 years ago and completed at the beginning of the 1970s, long before climate change became a central tenet of the energy debate, Longannet was designed with stunning industrial simplicity and symmetry.

Britain's second-largest coal-fired power station was a product of a time when electricity generation was based on a technology now dismissed by modern engineers, not entirely without affection, as "burn and boil". You burned the fossil fuel, and used the heat to boil water, which drove the turbines to generate electricity.

Today, Longannet is at the centre of its owner ScottishPower's plans to demonstrate there is more to coal than burn and boil; that despite opposition from environmentalists, it has a future in providing Britain and other countries with a key component in the pursuit of energy security, affordability and sustainability, and is not, as some critics argue, a 19th-century nightmare haunting the 21st century.

In trying to make Longannet a centre for technological excellence, ScottishPower is turning it into a giant chemistry set. More than 1,000 contractors are putting the finishing touches to flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) equipment in three of the plant's four turbines.

Fitting FGD brings Longannet into line with the European Union's large combustion plant directive on reducing sulphur dioxide emissions. Without FGD, it would run for only limited hours, and would have to close in 2015.

Life extension does not come cheap. According to John Campbell, director of energy wholesale at ScottishPower, the company is investing about £170m in FGD, while associated investments to extend the plant's life have lifted the bill to £250m.

The scheme does have local benefits. Last year ScottishPower signed a five-year deal, worth up to £700m, with Scottish Coal to provide coal for Longannet and its smaller coal plant at Cockenzie.

At the time the deal was signed, Ignacio Galán, the chairman and chief executive of ScottishPower's Spanish parent, Iberdrola, made clear his ambitions for coal and Longannet: "Coal generation has a significant contribution to the security of electricity supply in the UK today."

The next stage is to fit Longannet with equipment to reduce emissions of nitrous oxides (NOX) to conform with impending legislation. The process uses ammonia and a vanadium pentoxide catalyst to turn the NOX into water and nitrogen. Fitting the equipment will cost "several hundred million pounds" and require greater political clarity, according to ScottishPower executives. Work is also under way on a 25-mega­watt biomass plant, using wood chip, peanut husks and dried waste.

The big issue, however, is carbon capture and storage (CCS). For fossil fuel burners, this is a kind of holy grail, though one not yet available on a commercial scale. The theory is simply: carbon dioxide is collected, transported and buried in holes in the ground.

The government is keen, and is running a competition to encourage the development of CCS. It could help the UK cut emission levels and be sold to power generators around the world.

But as Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary, said in a speech last month, CCS is vital to reconciling the continuing use of coal with Britain's emission targets.

He told a conference at Imperial College London: "Clean fossil fuels are a less sure prospect because of uncertainties around carbon capture and storage, the great prize of clean coal and gas.

"What is clear is that we cannot say that in 20 years' time we will be building unabated coal-fired power stations and that we will meet our carbon budgets. It's not credible," he said.

It is a view that ScottishPower and Iberdrola appear to accept. As Galán said last year: "Iberdrola is committed to developing the best technologies that will deliver low-carbon generation in this country.

"Through our existing co-firing capability of biomass with potential advances in carbon capture and storage technologies, we are ready to provide the flexible generation needed to support the UK's growth goals in renewable energy and at the same time ensure security of supply."

If he gets his way, and if CCS does prove commercially viable, Longannet will brood over the Firth of Forth for some years to come. Some might say that is a big if; it will certainly be an expensive one.

• UK Coal
• Alternative energy
• Energy
• Energy efficiency
• Fossil fuels
• Pollution
• Climate change
• Chemistry
• Green technology