EU Recommends Six Projects For EUR1 Billion CCS Funding -Sources

The European Commission is recommending giving a total of EUR1 billion to six projects to help develop a technology to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, people familiar with the situation told Dow Jones Newswires Monday.

The commission, the European Union's executive body, proposed five of the projects get EUR180 million each, while the remaining one gets EUR100 million, the people said.

The projects are Spanish utility firm Endesa SA's (ELE.MC) scheme in Compostilla, Spain; Vattenfall Group's plant in Jaenschwalde, Germany; a U.K. scheme run by Powerfuel PLC in Hatfield, Yorkshire; a scheme in Maasvlakte in the Netherlands, run by E.ON AG (EOAN.XE), as well as one in Poland, run by Polska Grupa Energetyczna, or PGE SA. In addition, the commission has recommended that an Enel SpA (ENEL.MI) scheme in Italy should get EUR100 million.

A French project which was earmarked for EUR50 million of investment has been dropped because it wasn't sufficiently developed, one of the people said.

-By Alessandro Torello and Frank Huetten, Dow Jones Newswires; [phone]; [e-mail]