Carbon capture visit and funding ‘makes a mockery’ of planning process

Climate campaigners has responded to the First Minister’s plans to visit to the Aberdeenshire CCS project saying it ‘makes a mockery’ of the planning process and questioning why there was more public funding being pledged for fossil fuel infrastructure.

The visit was announced as news broke of an official complaint into the Scottish Government’s handling of the planning application for the Peterhead gas power station with carbon capture. 

The FM’s visit raises a number of concerns including that the explicit endorsement of this project may undermine any future assessment of a planning application to build the Acorn Project.

Environmentalists are also alarmed that very limited public money is being handed to a pet project of fossil fuel companies. Shell, who are a key partner in Acorn, have made £50billion profit in the past two years.  

The Acorn Project is not yet in the planning system, and no application has been made yet it appears the FM is gambling our energy future on this technology working. The Scottish Government’s over-reliance on faltering Negative Emissions Technologies created a huge gap in its calculations around emissions reductions for the 2030 climate targets.

CCS has never delivered the capture rates that its proponents claim and there is a growing body of evidence that all it is doing is capturing public money and providing greenwash for continued fossil fuel expansion.

Friends of the Earth Scotland climate and energy campaigner Caroline Rance said,

“The Acorn carbon capture terminal does not exist and there hasn’t even been a planning application submitted to build it. However, with these fawning statements of support, the First Minister is in danger of making a mockery of the Scottish Government conducting a fair assessment of future planning applications.”

“Vital public services are crying out for funding yet John Swinney has decided to give millions of pounds to a pet project of Shell, who made £50 billion profit in the last two years. The public must be starting to think the Scottish Government has been captured by the fossil fuel industry with hundreds of cosy meetings, huge handouts and the rolling back of positions on ending oil and gas.“

“The Acorn Project is a pipe dream of polluters that will never live up to its hype.The purpose of CCS is to greenwash plans to keep burning oil and gas. Carbon capture has already had billions of pounds and decades of work to prove itself and it has failed on its promises everywhere it has been tried.”

“Both the Scottish and UK Governments need to realise that public money would be far better invested in climate solutions that work today and can create decent green jobs such as home insulation, public transport and affordable renewable energy.”

Key questions for the First Minister: 

• How can Ministers making future planning decisions be expected to judge the Acorn project on its merits when the First Minister is fawning over it and is funnelling public money towards it?

• Why is public money required to deliver this project when the oil companies who will benefit are making obscene profits?

• How will this project avoid the failures that have been seen in every other carbon capture project around the world?