The UK’s decision to pull the plug on its £1 billion ($1.42 billion) carbon capture and storage programme, with no warning and just weeks before the two finalists were to submit their final bids, prevented the projects from potentially getting a funding lifeline from Europe, members of parliament heard this week.
Richard Simon-Lewis, finance director of Capture Power, the consortium that was bidding to build the White Rose project in Yorkshire, told an inquiry by the Commons Energy & Climate Change Committee that he was only told officially by a Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) official one hour before the statement to the stock market on 25 November.
