The Swedish energy giant Vattenfall has decided that carbon capture and storage is a dead duck and will wind up its research efforts in the area.
The state-owned giant had been investing in this technology for more than 10 years, with plans for a power plant equipped with CCS in 2016.
Capturing and liquifying CO2 coming from carbon combustion to later store it underground was meant to curb greenhouse effect gas emissions, but its costs and the energy it requires make the technology unviable.
This really does put a question mark over the direction taken by Ed Davey, who is hosing down oil majors with money in an attempt to keep them working on the technology. It's the 1970s all over again - ministers pick winners while the public watches them sink without trace, all the time wondering if it would have been better simply to have burnt the cash in a power station, which at least would have generated something useful.