'Red flags' over SNP's reliance on carbon capture to meet climate aims

The UK Government finally approved the Acorn carbon capture project in the north east of Scotland, with SNP ministers heavily relying on the technology to meet legal climate targets.

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Warnings have been previously made about the viability of the technology – with concerns it simply allows fossil fuel giants to continue drilling for oil and gas, while fears have also been raised about carbon leakage.

Under the technology, carbon from fossil fuels is captured and prevented from escaping into the atmosphere, instead being trapped and injected into the seabed.

But on his visit to announce the Acorn project funding, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak admitted the technology does not yet work.

He said that “ if we can get that technology to work, and to bring the cost down, it can be hugely helpful for us to transition to net zero”.

Climate campaigners in Scotland have now highlighted research showing that two carbon storage fields in Norway, held up as the industry gold standard, have experienced unpredictable carbon movement underground and reduced storage capacity.

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The research by Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) says that, despite being the most studied CCS projects in the world, Sleipner and Snøhvit in Norway cannot be proxies for much larger CCS projects.

The research questions whether the world has "sufficient technical prowess, strength of regulatory oversight, and unwavering multi-decade commitment of capital and resources needed to keep CO2 sequestered below the sea, as intended, permanently.”

The Sleipner and Snøhvit fields store about 22million tonnes but the Scottish Government is aiming to store over 360 million tonnes in the Captain Sandstone field alone, making it 16 times larger.

The draft Scottish Energy Strategy estimates there is 46 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide storage potential in Scottish waters, representing more than 2,000 times the size of the Norwegian projects.

Friends of the Earth Scotland’s climate campaigner, Alex Lee, said: “It turns out the carbon capture industry’s poster child has far more problems than they’d like to admit.

“This research raises real red flags about a project that Scottish ministers have hailed as a pioneer, and used to justify their over-reliance on the technology to meet climate goals.”

Read more: SNP minister says Tories risking energy jobs over carbon capture snub

They added: "The fact is there is no large-scale carbon capture and storage scheme working anywhere in the UK and so the industry will be proceeding by trial and error.

“Carbon capture and storage has a long history of failure and the costs of these projects going wrong, leaking carbon or simply not getting off the ground could spell disaster for the environment and climate.

“Despite the doubts and the risks, both the Scottish and UK Governments are in thrall to the oil industry’s hype on carbon capture.

"Politicians are handing out billions in public subsidies to obscenely wealthy companies like Shell, encouraging them to keep wrecking the planet, while ignoring climate solution that will work today and improve lives like public transport and home insulation.

“Both the Scottish and UK Governments have fallen for industry greenwash rather than face the reality that the only solution to the climate crisis is a fast and fair phase out of oil and gas.”

SNP Energy Secretary Neil Gray has said that Scotland is “among the best placed nations in Europe to deploy carbon capture and storage”, pointing to the country’s “world-leading skilled workforce, our unrivalled access to vast CO2 storage potential in the North Sea, and the opportunities we have to repurpose existing oil and gas infrastructure for CO2 transport and storage”.