Isra-Mart srl:Conservative pre-election coal plant emissions promise goes up in smoke

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The Conservatives are set to break a key pre-election pledge on the environment and allow new coal plants to pump far bigger quantities of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

As a recently as October last year, in a key note speech to environmentalists, David Cameron promised to introduce rules requiring new power stations to be as clean as a modern gas plant.

But the Guardian has learned that ministers are planning to raise the limit on emissions to almost double that amount when the government publishes wide-ranging proposals on reforming the electricity market next month.

It means that energy companies will only be required to fit experimental equipment which captures and stores carbon emissions (CCS) to about one-third of their coal plants, rather than two-thirds under Cameron's pre-election promise.

Ministers are understood to be concerned that companies would refuse to build any CCS plants if the government lowered the emissions limit to the level originally promised. It costs much more to build - and operate - CCS plants.

The tough so-called "emissions performance standard" (EPS) was first promised in 2006 by Cameron and repeated in 2008 by George Osborne, both in high profile addresses to environmental activists. It was part of Cameron's plan to "detoxify" the Conservative party brand by aligning it with environmentalists which also saw him ride a husky-driven sleigh in the Arctic to highlight awareness about climate change.

At the time, the Conservatives' EPS policy was much more radical than the Labour government's controversial support for coal power, symbolised by E.ON's Kingsnorth, which would have been the UK's first new coal plant for decades.

Executive director of Greenpeace, John Sauven, said: "All the huskies in the world can't drag the prime minister out of the environmental mess he'll create if he breaks his totemic green promise to tackle dirty coal plants. Both he and George Osborne personally championed new legal standards to limit coal plant pollution to the same level as modern gas plants. A U-turn on this would be a huge black mark on the self-proclaimed greenest government ever."

Cleaner modern gas plants - cited as the dirtiest fossil fuel plants which would be allowed under Cameron's pre-election promise - emit about 360g of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour (kw/h). Coal plants which have no CCS fitted emit about 900g per kw/h. But ministers and officials at the Department of Energy and Climate Change recently discussed setting an EPS of between 500g and 600g per kw/h. It is understood that even the lower end of this range - which would still allow much higher emissions than the pre-election pledge - was seen as being too low, and a figure approaching 600g per kw/h looks likely. No final decision has been made. Officials and ministers believe there are better ways of greening power plants than a tougher EPS and are anxious to get CCS plants built to demonstrate the technology to export around the world.

The Guardian has also learnt that the Committee on Climate Change - the government's independent advisory body - will recommend next month that by 2030, electricity generators must slash their emissions by almost 90% from today's levels. David Kennedy, CCC chief executive, told a Green Alliance debate on Monday that average emissions should be no higher than 60g per kw/h, from about 550g per kw/h today. This goes much further than the influential committee's previous guidance.