By Daniel Fineren
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's new coalition government, led by the Conservatives' David Cameron, plans to set a minimum price for emitting climate-warming carbon, while Liberal Democrat MPs would abstain from a parliamentary vote on building new nuclear power stations, it said on Wednesday.
Under the deal, the Lib Dems will speak against the upcoming national planning statement (NPS) on new nuclear plants in Britain but will not vote on it.
"Liberal Democrats have long opposed any new nuclear construction," the coalition policy statement published on Wednesday afternoon reads.
"Conservatives, by contrast, are committed to allowing the replacement of existing nuclear power stations provided they are subject to the normal planning process for major projects... and provided also that they receive no public subsidy."
The new government plans to introduce an emissions performance standard that will prevent coal-fired power stations from being built without technology to capture enough carbon to duck below an as-yet undefined limit.
The Conservative party said in March it would implement a carbon tax on power generation if European Union carbon prices fell below a certain level and the combined Conservative-Lib Dem grouping plans to follow that with a push toward full auctioning of carbon emissions permits under an EU-wide trading scheme.
Setting a minimum price emitters must pay for carbon they release into the atmosphere makes coal and gas fired power plants more expensive to operate and, if set high enough, should encourage low-carbon alternatives.
"It's good because it doesn't interfere with the EU carbon market directly," said Emmanuel Fages, a carbon analyst at Societe Generale.
"It depends on how it is set up. It's important that it's a shifting levy rather than a flat tax, because the latter could have a severe threshold effect on carbon costs incurred by UK utilities."
The statement also said they would try to persuade the EU to move toward full auctioning of emissions permits, but it was not clear when this would begin.
Many of Europe's biggest utilities have shown an interest in building a new fleet of nuclear reactors in Britain but have said they want to see higher, long-term charges on rival climate-warming power plants to support their multi-billion pound investments.
The Conservative-led coalition plans to push on with Labour's plan to invest public money in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology for four coal-fired power stations and maintain the Renewables Obligation Certificate (ROC) system.
Other plans announced on Wednesday included measures to encourage marine energy, mandating a national recharging network for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, and looking into the possibility of increasing Britain's renewable energy targets.
(Additional reporting by Michael Szabo; Editing by Keiron Henderson)