The UK government has cancelled its £1bn competition for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology just six months before it was due to be awarded, breaking a pledge in the Conservative party’s election manifesto.
The abandonment of a technology championed by David Cameron and seen as vital in tackling global warming will be an embarrassment to the UK, just days before a major UN climate change summit in Paris. Industry figures called the move “devastating” and while experts said it would make meeting the UK’s binding carbon cuts “almost impossible” and more expensive.
Two projects had been in the running to build plants demonstrating CCS at commercial scale. One was backed by Shell and SSE at Peterhead. The White Rose consortium was based at Drax, the UK’s largest power plant, but was in trouble after Drax halted its investment in September.
Professor Stuart Haszeldine of Edinburgh University believes that this was the final act that utterly undermines British negotiators’ status in Paris. He also said “among the lessons from this disastrous reputation failure, and time and money wasting failure, must be that energy policy and infrastructure delivery is too important to be left to short term politicians.” To read more go to: