UK state aid for Lynemouth power station under investigation

One of the flagship projects of the conversion of coal power plants to operate entirely on biomass in the UK has encountered a setback. The European Commission suspects that the public subsidies allocated to the operator of the Lynemouth power station, Lynemouth Power, a subsidiary of the German company RWE, will unduly distort competition. The public aid will take the form of the so-called 'contract for difference', fixing a certain sales price ('strike price') for electricity generated by the power…