Yorkshire power plant to bag £165m 'clean coal' grant

A power plant in Hatfield colliery in Yorkshire looks set to collect £165m in European Commission funding to convert to “clean coal,” according to reports. The plant in Doncaster, owned by Powerfuel, is one of a “cluster” of CCS plants where emissions from a string of industrial sites on Humberside could be pumped into former gas fields under the North Sea.

The news follows E.ON’s decision to delay plans for a carbon capture and storage (CCS) enabled power station in Kingsnorth, Kent, for three years.

Liberal democrat MEP, Chris Davies, who steered the CCS legislation through European Parliament, told the Times that E.ON had failed to get EU funding for the project leading to the U-turn. He added that a formal announcement from the European Parliament was due shortly.

Kingsnorth is disqualified from reaping a £1bn UK government research grant because it will miss the 2014 deadline.

A government spokesman said that E.ON had not officially withdrawn from the competition or been barred from it.