The owners of Britain’s biggest power station have pulled out of a £1billion government-backed green energy project.
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In the United Kingdom the government has been offering £1billion for carbon capture ventures as part of a competition, but it already collapsed once in 2011 when all bidders pulled out apart from Scottish Power, which could not agree terms with the government.
Drax’s decision to abandon five years of planning for a carbon capture and storage system next to its huge North Yorkshire power station is the most visible sign yet of how green energy subsidy cutbacks are jolting investors. “It is vital ministers now step in to protect the future of the White Rose project”. It would have seen a new plant built new to Drax’s existing power station and would create enough energy to power 630,000 homes, with the majority of Carbon dioxide transported by pipelines for storage under the North Sea.
When the project has ended, Drax will not invest further but will make the site, which it owns, and the power plant infrastructure available for the project to be built. “Drax itself would have been actually carbon negative, in that they were burning biomass and then were going to be storing that capture, so they would have been taking carbon out of the atmosphere”.
Drax has been developing White Rose in a consortium with French company Alstom and the BOC industrial gas group.
Drax has indicated it will be fully committed to completing its current work on the project.
Mr Emery said: “We are confident the technology we have developed has real potential, but have reluctantly taken a decision not to invest any further in the development of this project”.
He told the Financial Times: ‘The Government has to make hard decisions based on affordability and, in turn, so are we’.
Emery continued: “We will focus our resources on the areas, which we can deliver best value, particularly working with government to explore the potential for converting a fourth generating unit to run on sustainable biomass …”
Labour and unions blamed the Government for the situation.
Unite national officer for energy, Kevin Coyne said: “This is a disaster”.
But bosses said they had concerns about the Government’s “future support” for so-called carbon capture schemes.
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “This is a very worrying development and shows how government back-pedalling on energy and climate policy is costing the United Kingdom jobs and investment”.
“Today’s announcement calls into question the long-term viability of chancellor George Osborne’s much vaunted “Northern powerhouse”.
The campaign, entitled People Power, and launched by Solar Trade Association and RenewableUK, is calling for members of the public, as well as the thousands of renewable energy employees, to petition the Government to provide more stable support to these maturing sectors by writing to their local MP and harnessing the power of social media.
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“We need a coherent strategy and a clear map of how we transition to low-carbon generation, keep the lights on and meet the needs of consumers and businesses”.
