“Britain will miss its legal target to cut emissions by 80% by the middle of the century unless action is taken to cut greenhouse pollution from gas-powered stations, influential government advisers warned today.” – Guardian article. FT article.

Brussels – WWF has sent the European Commission a formal complaint against Germany for its failure to fulfil a legal obligation introduced by the 2008 EU climate and energy legislative package. The complaint concerns the apparent faulty approval procedure for a new coal-fired power plant at Mannheim (Baden-Württemberg), which was given the go-ahead on 27 July last year. Read more…

Norwegian NGO Zero this week launched new web pages including a worldwide map of CCS projects. This can be found here.

Climate Action Tracker is a new and useful website gauging UNFCCC commitments by parties in absolute scientific terms rather than just relative political ones.

Set against the science, the EU27 at -20% GHG remains “inadequate”, though moving to -30% GHG by 2020 would put it in the higher end of the “medium” category.

For developed countries in aggregate, commitments so far fall in the range 8-14% by 2020, set against the IPCC advice of 25-40% needed over the same period.

In this pre-CPH press release, Europe’s biggest emitter calls for more ETS loopholes to offset business-as-usual coal invesments, while failing even to mention the needed higher GHG target or even the prospects of CCS.

WWF Legislative Briefing, October 2009.

Here FYI a link to the DG TREN documents on MEP Chris Davies’ website.

For CCS strategies elsewhere in the world, George Peridas’s blog is one to follow. This recent posting includes a summary of developments in China.

An interested piece in the New York Times today considers CCS on large installations outside the power sector.

While I prefer to focus on CCS demonstration plants, this full-chain pilot project at the Mountaineer power plant in West Virginia catches my attention, not least because two European companies Alstom and RWE are also involved.