The commission has recently proposed giving a total of EUR1 billion to six projects to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology that could help them mitigate carbon dioxide emissions and store it in underground reservoir.
As reported, the executive body of the European Union (EU), has named the facility in Hatfield, Yorkshire as the only UK bid, along with five other plants in Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain.
Hatfield facility is said to have been chosen on the basis that its own proposal was for a pre-combustion system. Among the bidders, there were a few pre-combustion systems while a number of post-combustion systems such as Longannet. An additional funding is expected to be allocated to develop CCS systems next year.
Richard Dixon, director of WWF, which identified Longannet to be the best option in the UK competition for CCS funding, said: “It is disappointing Longannet has not been chosen this time around. We sincerely hope it will get some form of support to properly test this technology soon, whether it is from Europe or as a winner of the UK government’s own CCS competition.”
