Labour accused of ‘hypocrisy’ over fossil fuel donation

Climate campaigners have accused Scottish Labour of hypocrisy over revelations the party has accepted a large donation from the energy company behind controversial plans for a new fossil fuel burning power station in Aberdeenshire.

The Labour-led UK Government has spoken frequently of the need to “protect billpayers from volatile fossil fuel markets” and pledged to cut energy bills yet the proposal at Peterhead from this donor would see household electricity bills kept high by being tied to the price of gas for the next 35 years or more.

SSE made a £25,800 donation to Scottish Labour in Summer 2024 just before the General Election. It appears to be a payment after energy giant sponsored a Parliamentary Lounge at the party conference in February 2024. SSE will again sponsor a Lounge in the 2025 conference this weekend (21-23 Feb).

SSE, despite their marketing focusing on renewable energy, operate 14 fossil fuel burning power stations across the UK and Ireland and generate the majority of its energy from non-renewable sources.

The company is estimated to have made £8.3billion in pretax profits since the start of the energy price crisis whilst 34% of all households in Scotland were in fuel poverty in 2023.

Analysis published in January 2024 showed that SSE was amongst the most persistent lobbyists at the Scottish Parliament organising at least 105 meetings with MSPs from March 2018 to September 2023.

Friends of the Earth Scotland just transition campaigner Rosie Hampton commented,

“SSE’s plan to generate electricity by burning dirty fossil fuels will keep our energy bills locked into the same volatile gas markets that have caused so much pain in recent years.

“It is hypocritical for Labour to correctly say that we must break these chains but fail to speak out against these plans for Peterhead that could drive up household bills for the next 35 years.

“SSE know this proposal is bad news for billpayers as well as being hugely damaging to the climate due to its dependence on failing carbon capture technology. The company is scrambling around looking for political support for this fossil fuel project through relentless lobbying and huge donations.

“Taking money from a firm who’ve made billions in profit from the fossil fuel price crisis is a deeply out of touch decision by Labour.

“Building new fossil fuels infrastructure like this will undermine the fair and fast transition that is needed by workers and communities across Scotland. People are campaigning strongly against this proposal because we recognise that fossil fuels are costing us the earth and renewables represent an affordable, reliable energy future.”

More on the Peterhead gas project

In early 2022 SSE and Equinor submitted a planning application for a new gas burning power station with carbon capture at Peterhead, Aberdeenshire. The application is for an additional plant alongside the existing Peterhead gas burning power station, which SEPA figures show is repeatedly amongst Scotland’s biggest climate polluters.

The development poses a significant risk to Scotland’s climate commitments and will undermine a just transition for workers and communities. The Scottish Government will make the decision whether to approve this project and lock households into reliance on fossil fuels for energy for the next 35 years.

44 NGOs representing climate and fuel poverty groups wrote to the Scottish Minister in May 2024 urging them to reject the planning application saying it would maintain the current energy system which is “dominated by exploitative fossil fuel companies who are benefitting off ordinary people’s hardship.”

SSE was recently forced into redoing its assessment of the climate harm from the project after expert research showed that the Peterhead proposals would create 1 million more tonnes of climate pollution than the company had admitted in its planning application to the Scottish Government.