GHG Daily
2/1/2016
The United Kingdom’s National Audit Office will probe the scrapping of the country’s £1 billion carbon capture and storage commercialization competition, according to The Guardian. The newspaper reported Sunday that it has acquired a letter written by Auditor General Amyas Morse. “In the coming weeks we will begin work looking at particular areas: the costs that government has incurred in running the competition; and the department [of Energy and Climate Change’s] understanding of how the decision to cancel the competition impacts on its aims to maintain security of supply and reduce emissions,” Morse wrote.
“The costs to families and businesses of his short-sighted decision could yet be bigger still because without CCS it will be more expensive to cut emissions. This NAO probe should uncover the full cost to the taxpayer of [Chancellor of the Exchequer] George Osborne’s broken promise,” Lisa Nandy, the shadow energy and climate change secretary who requested the investigation, told The Guardian.
The U.K. announced on Nov. 25 the official cancellation of the competition, in which two projects remained in the running for £1 billion in funding. Developers of both projects, Royal Dutch Shell’s Peterhead project and Capture Power’s White Rose project, have since stated that the projects are unlikely to move forward.
