Hatfield tipped to win race for EU carbon capture funding

The Hatfield power plant in Yorkshire has been tipped as the winner in the race to secure EU funding for the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

According to reports in The Scotsman newspaper yesterday, the European Commission is set to name Hatfield in Yorkshire as the only successful UK bid for a share of the EU's €250m ((£231m) CCS fund, along with six other plants in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Italy.

Powerfuel's Hatfield plant in Yorkshire applied for the funds, alongside E.ON's plant at Kingsnorth in Kent, the Longannet plant in Fife proposed by Scottish Power, and a site at Tilbury in Essex operated by Npower.

However, the rival bidders yesterday insisted that they were still in the running. Scottish Power said that no official decision had yet been made on the EU funding and refused to confirm or deny the media reports that it had lost out. "Nothing has been formally announced yet," said a spokesman for the company.

Powerfuel, Npower and E.ON also all had no comment at the time of writing.

The Kingsnorth, Longannet and Tilbury stations have also applied for the UK government's £1bn competition to fully fund a post-combustion CCS plant and are all still shortlisted.

But some insiders think Longannet is unlikely to win this cash if the EU funding goes to Hatfield.

According to a study from WWF released in May, Longannet power station is the best option for UK government trials looking at capturing carbon emissions, but the Scotsman report claimed that Hatfield was chosen on the basis that its proposal was for a pre-combustion system.

Pre-combustion CCS involves removing carbon before coal is burned. There were only three such systems among the 11 plants in total which applied for the EU funding.