Ed Davey has dismissed fears that British projects are poised to miss out on a share of £1.2billion from the EU to develop ground-breaking carbon capture and storage technology.
Plans to build a carbon capture plant at Peterhead have been included on a reserve list for the European Commission’s NER300 competition. But recent reports suggested UK schemes will not be awarded money because of delays in Mr Davey’s department of energy and climate change (Decc).
Mr Davey had been expected to announce the winners of the UK’s own £1billion contest this autumn, but he has now pushed it back to next spring, in a move which has reportedly alarmed EU officials in Brussels.
But the Liberal Democrat told the Press and Journal yesterday he was “very confident” that British schemes were still in the running and reaffirmed Decc’s commitment to its £1billion competition. “The £1billion is absolutely there and more,” he said.
“We have a package which we believe is, if not the most, one of the most attractive in the whole world.
“There’s not really been that much of a delay to be honest, we are more or less on track.
“What happened was we had more applicants than we expected. We had eight applicants, which is fantastic news.
“We decided we would whittle it down to four using a series of objective criteria from the competition.
“Officials went through that process and identified four to go through to a new second stage of the competition and we hope to make announcements in spring next year of which CCS projects will go forward.”
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