Peterhead gas pollution risk triples in new analysis

Thanks to successful public pressure and campaigning, we now have a truer picture of the enormous climate pollution from the Peterhead power station plans.

The Scottish Government must now finally reject plans for a new gas burning power station with carbon capture that was first proposed in 2022.

The developer SSE was forced to resubmit its assessment of the environmental harm of the project after massive holes were identified in the official documents that were originally submitted as part of its planning application.

The Scottish Government should be embarrassed by its failure to ever properly interrogate the original claims of SSE or order a new environmental assessment when concerns were raised.

Soaring climate pollution

The new Environmental Impact Assessment has revealed that the total lifetime climate pollution caused by the project would increase from 6.3 million tonnes of climate-changing pollution to almost three times as much at 17.1 million tonnes of carbon.

A significant proportion of this increase was due to SSE now including the huge emissions from extracting the gas from places like the North Sea and transporting it to be burned at the Peterhead site. Previously, the company was only counting the pollution from burning the gas in the power station.

Including these “upstream” emissions gives a much more honest picture of the harm caused and the demand created for fossil fuels by a project like this, and why it must be stopped.

Carbon capture failures

Even the tripling of its climate harm is likely to be a gross underestimate because of SSE’s wildly exaggerated claims about how much carbon the power station aims to capture. This entire scheme is built on the rotten foundations of carbon capture technology, which decades of evidence has made clear will not work.

SSE’s claims that the plant would capture 90% of the carbon dioxide it produces have never been achieved anywhere on earth and are simply not supported by evidence. A 75% carbon capture rate is a more realistic estimate of the plant’s operation. Even the UK Government have set the bar low with just 70% being the minimum consistent capture level required to qualify for further Government subsidy.

For every percentage point that carbon capture fails, that represents thousands more tonnes of pollution belching out into the atmosphere every week for the 25 years that SSE think this plant will run. The climate risks from dodgy carbon capture are hugely significant.

Decades of high energy bills

The new station would burn gas from 2030 until 2055 – 10 years past Scotland’s net zero target date. What’s even worse, SSE have said that the existing gas power station at Peterhead, already one of Scotland biggest polluters, will run concurrently burning gas until 2040.

Burning gas to generate electricity for means that our bills will remain tied to the international gas prices that have caused so much pain and fuel poverty in recent years. Even the UK Energy Minister Ed Miliband said that households should get off the “rollercoaster” of fossil fuel prices.

The recent conflict in Iran could have pushed up energy prices and we would have been able to do nothing about it – yet energy companies would have reaped the profits as they did after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Politicians should be doing all they can to free people from this exploitative energy system that has produced widespread fuel poverty and climate breakdown.

What happens next with the application?

This new analysis has been sent to the Scottish Government Energy Consents Units who opened it up for public consultation until the 8th July. Over 1600 people and 30 NGOs lodged an objection to the project.