Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has announced the Government’s long-awaited response to its ‘clean coal’ consultation. In it he announced that ‘no new coal-fired power stations would be built without carbon capture and storage (CCS)’, and that all such stations should have full CCS by 2025.

With Kingsnorth on hold, what future for coal in the UK?

National policy statements sound cool. They sound like they might actually sort stuff out. Instead of scrabbling around doing little bits of policy here and there, like some sort of policy tapas, a NPS means you're going for the policy hog roast - go on, have a big national slab of policy sir, there you go.

In its National Policy Statements on energy - published today - the Government fails to make it clear how we could rule out dirty coal for good.