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Energy secretary Ed Davey is blocking support for Eggborough’s biomass conversion because he favours wind power, a top executive at the plant has told Utility Week.
As trade unions on Thursday redoubled calls to save 800 jobs at the power station, the company’s chief operating officer Paul Tomlinson hit out at “internal politics” thwarting the project.
Plans to convert the 2GW coal station to run on biomass were thrown into jeopardy by a surprise government decision in December to ration “go-early” approval for subsidies.
“We are still a bit in the dark” about the reasons for the policy change, said Tomlinson, despite several meetings with government since December. “We thought we had ticked all the boxes.”
Eggborough is seeking political backing to rescue the project but the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) is “not filling us with a tremendous amount of confidence,” Tomlinson admitted.
“We are suffering a little bit from a coalition government and internal politics. We have got Ed Davey at the top of Decc, who is out to support wind… at the cost of other technologies such as ours.”
Davey has previously argued Eggborough could go ahead without the go-early approval and apply for a support contract under the enduring regime at the end of the year.
That is a possibility, said Tomlinson, “but we need some assurance. We can’t tag investors along on the basis that ‘government won’t let us down this time’. Unless we can get some confidence from George Osborne, David Cameron and – I suppose least likely – Ed Davey, it is not going to happen.”
Eggborough had contractors lined up to start work on 6 January. They still want to be involved, but delays could be costly, said Tomlinson. “We are within weeks of Alstom and Morgan Sindall being in a more difficult position to start the work.”
Asked about Eggborough at an event in Westminster, Davey insisted there had been an objective process, not a ministerial decision.
Eggborough got to the last 16 out of 57 applicants in the go-early process, but was not one of the 10 to make the affordability list. “We are having to turn projects away because we have more than we can afford,” said Davey.
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