Reuters cited Mr Lord Hunt Britain minister of state for energy and climate change as saying that Britain still hopes to lead the world in carbon capture and sequestration technology despite delays to coal-fired power plant projects.

He said that "I don't think because of that decision it undermines the future of coal in this country. They obviously took a commercial decision, but the fact is lots of companies are interested in developing coal through CCS."

E.ON UK decision to delay would take the plant completion date beyond Britain's CCS competition deadline of 2014, but Mr Lord Hunt reiterated the competition was still on track. He said that "There's a timetable to the competition and we're sticking to that."

But he admitted the government had been slow decide on the winner of the contest for hundreds of millions of public funds and promised to speed up the process. He said that "This message of getting on with it, I will take that onboard."

Mr Lord Hunt said "We understand the need for speed. And I hope we have some conclusions to that very shortly."

(Sourced from Reuters)