FT.com, Jean Eaglesham and Rebecca Bream, 1 February 2008

Ministers were on Thursday night accused of conniving with the energy industry, after e-mails revealed a supplier appearing to dictate the terms on which it expected the government to approve a controversial coal-fired power station.

The e-mail trail, obtained by Greenpeace, the environmental pressure group, using the Freedom of Information Act is politically embarrassing for John Hutton, the business secretary.

A contentious planning application by Eon UK to replace its Kingsnorth power station in Medway, Kent was referred to Mr Hutton last month. The £1bn ($1.9bn) scheme, Britain’s first coal-fired power station for 20 years, is seen as a test case for a new generation of coal-fired generators.

Environment campaigners argue such schemes run counter to the government’s professed commitment to reducing carbon emissions.

An exchange of e-mails between Eon and the Department for Business suggests the company is confident it will get Mr Hutton’s approval.

“We are expecting a positive determination by SoS [the secretary of state] on KN5&6 [Kingsnorth] by end May 2008 latest, to meet the 2012 delivery date,” an Eon manager wrote to an official. The energy company manager rejects a suggestion by the official that the planning approval could be conditional on installing carbon capture technology, which significantly reduces emissions, in the new plant. In response, the official writes: “Thanks. I won’t include [the requirement].”

Greenpeace said the exchange showed a pillar of the government’s climate change strategy “evaporating in six minutes under the pressure of a single e-mail from a German coal company”. John Sauven, executive director, said: “Now we know who writes policy in the Department for Business.”

However, the department rejected any suggestion that planning approval for the plant was a foregone conclusion, despite Eon’s apparent confidence.

“Absolutely no decision has been made ... and no timetable has been set,” an official said. “What the company might like is one thing, what’s going to happen is another. It is standard practice at this stage of processing an application for the department to explore with the company ... what conditions might be applied to an approval so that the ministers can take these into account when deciding whether to say Yes, No or to instigate a public inquiry,” said the department.

Eon told the FT it regularly talked to the government “about all manner of things”. It would be unrealistic to require the new plant to include carbon capture equipment “when the technology doesn’t exist yet”, the company said.