A £1.2bn cross-Channel undersea electricity cable backed by a Tory donor has been refused permission by the Business Secretary after opposition from within the party.
Aquind, which counts Alexander Temerko, the Ukrainian-born businessman and Conservative party donor as a director, had proposed laying the 2GW interconnector between Portsmouth and Normandy in France, which would have been capable of carrying around 5pc of the UK’s power needs.
But a decision note published on the Government website on Thursday said Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, had chosen to “refuse development consent” as he was not satisfied that “appropriate alternatives to the proposed route” had been sufficiently considered.
The letter added that the project’s “proposed landfall in an urban location” had also been a concern for Mr Kwarteng, with local campaigners warning it threatened a number of local landmarks and could delay a planned coastal defence scheme.
The project has attracted controversy and raised questions over the influence of Russian-linked oligarchs on British business and politics.
The former energy minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan, now the International Trade Secretary, removed herself from the process in July over funding received by Northumberland Conservatives.
Aquind is part-owned by Viktor Fedotov, a British citizen who was born in Russia and was a director of the country’s oil and gas company Lukoil in the 1990s.
Mr Temerko, who became a British citizen in 2011 and has donated more than £1m to the Conservative Party, spent five years running Russkoe Oruzhie, a firm producing weapons for Russia’s military, before moving to Russian oil and gas company Yukos in 2000.
In 2020 he was reported to have shared a £12,000 table with Alok Sharma, the business secretary at the time, at the Tories’ Black and White Ball fundraiser.
The same year Mr Temerko told MPs that Russian-linked businessmen had “zero” political influence.
Earlier this week, Penny Mordaunt, the trade minister and MP for Portsmouth North, said it would be a political mistake for the project to go ahead and make Britain more dependent on France for electricity.
Ms Mordaunt celebrated the decision on Thursday, tweeting “we did it”.
She said: “We won. Thank you to everyone who campaigned against Aquind and this ridiculous proposal that would have damaged our city and it would have damaged the country.”
The decision can only be challenged through a judicial review, a move Aquind said it was considering.
A spokesman for Aquind said: “We disagree with the decision of the Secretary of State, and the rationale behind it. We are considering the decision, the grounds for the refusal, and a potential legal challenge (judicial review). We believe our application for a Development Consent Order to be accurate and robust, and it has met all the requirements.
“We will continue the development of Aquind Interconnector, and we will be engaging with the relevant parties in the coming weeks.”
The UK delayed deciding upon the scheme in October and asked for more information before making its decision.
Interconnectors which link up national grids are seen as a way of balancing energy networks as supply becomes more volatile because of the intermittent nature of renewable electricity, an increasing part of energy production.
