10 November 2009 - Only one of three projects in the UK government's flagship carbon capture and storage (CCS) competition is capable of delivering a full scale demonstration plant by the 2014 deadline, an expert has warned.

According to BusinessGreen, Professor Stuart Hazeldine, a geologist at the University of Edinburgh and leading expert in CCS technologies, said that the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) should close the competition and award the funding to Scottish Power to develop CCS at its Longannet plant in Fife in order to prevent any more time being wasted.

"Scottish Power are the only people who can deliver by 2014 now," he said. " The competition timescale has already slipped and to get it back on track the award needs to be made soon."

Back in 2007 the government said it would award the winner of its CCS competition around £1bn ($1.65bn) to help fund a commercial scale carbon capture demonstration project.

The government has said it plans to announce the winner some point next year with three proposals in the running: Longannet, RWE npower's station at Tilbury in Essex, and E.ON's plans for a new coal plant at Kingsnorth in Kent.

"RWE npower are showing a manifest lack of movement on their CCS offerings and E.ON have delayed Kingsnorth plans," said Hazeldine. "That leaves one obvious winner."

He added that the long-running competition had discouraged other firms from coming forward with project proposals. "The UK has such a slow track record on developing CCS that anyone who is able to has gone elsewhere," he said. "We need to get on with it."

The government has now committed to helping fund "up to four" CCS plants in the UK. The first – the competition winner - will be funded by the Treasury, but any further plants will be funded primarily from a levy on energy bills.

As well as awarding the competition to Scottish power, the government should announce a "feed study" – a detailed engineering evaluation – for CCS at Kingsnorth so that E.ON can install the technology when it likely revives the plant in the second half of this decade, Hazeldine advised.