“Rotten foundations” of Peterhead gas power station are collapsing with carbon capture failure

Environmental campaigners are calling on the Scottish Government to reject the Peterhead gas project saying the “bleak outlook” around carbon capture in Scotland means its “rotten foundations are collapsing.”

Fossil fuel giants SSE and Equinor applied for permission to build a new gas burning power station with carbon capture in 2022. The project is entirely reliant on the Acorn project to store any carbon it might capture.

The struggling Acorn carbon capture project suffered “a crippling blow” last week as its highest profile backer Storegga decided to pull out of the scheme. This is despite promises of over £280 million in public handouts from the UK and Scottish Governments.

The Acorn Project is years behind its previously promised schedules and has not even submitted a planning application. It is not clear when or if it will ever be operational. When assessing the project earlier this year, Aberdeenshire Council officials said “no degree of certainty can be offered as to the implementation” of the Acorn project.

Despite concerns about climate impacts, Aberdeenshire officials declined to oppose the application but instead called for the inclusion of a “Grampian Style” planning condition on the project, which would prevent the operation of the Peterhead gas plant until the Acorn Project was operational.

The final decision on whether to approve the project lies with Scottish Government Ministers.

Carbon capture greenwashing

Environmentalists regard carbon capture as greenwashing of fossil fuels and highlight how, despite $83 billion of subsidies worldwide, it is capturing less than 1% of global emissions. The world’s biggest CCS project in Australia was recently found to be capturing just 2.66% of emissions from the gas fields where it is located.

The Scottish Government’s draft plan to meet its climate commitments admitted that “All costs from negative emissions technologies are expected to fall on government”. This plan was slated as “delusional” by climate campaigners for expecting almost one third of emissions to be dealt with by these technologies within a decade.

The draft plan claims that by 2036 – 2040, these carbon capturing schemes should reduce climate pollution by 12.2 megatonnes of carbon dioxide every year. In 2023, Scotland’s total climate pollution was 39.6 megatonnes of carbon dioxide.

Friends of the Earth Scotland’s oil and gas campaigns manager Rosie Hampton said:

“The rotten foundations of carbon capture are collapsing for the Peterhead gas project. Carbon capture has a long history of failure around the world and it looks like Scotland will be no different. The Scottish Government should reject this project once and fall, rather than allowing energy giants to build a new fossil fuel power station when the infrastructure intended to capture the carbon doesn’t even exist.

“The outlook is bleak for the Acorn project with the closure of major carbon polluters at the Grangemouth oil refinery and the Mossmorran chemical plant. The biggest backer pulling out is another crippling blow for a scheme that has no plant, no planning application and is entirely reliant on public money to progress.”

“As well as the climate harm, new gas power will lock households into high energy bills driven by global markets beyond our control, as well as belching out pollution long past Scotland’s net zero target date of 2045. Our energy future should be built on renewable energy that is clean and affordable for the public. Workers deserve good, secure jobs, that the fantasy of carbon capture has never and will never provide.”