Peterhead is now the front-runner to set up the world’s first commercial carbon capture green energy plant – after Norway dramatically dumped its plans.
The UK Government is on the verge of granting £1billion of funding to develop a groundbreaking carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at the Buchan port.
A scheme put forward by Shell and SSE for the Aberdeenshire town’s gas-fired power station is one of two preferred bids for the Westminster cash.
The International Energy Agency says deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is critical to reducing carbon emissions.
But so far there is no full-scale commercial plant operating anywhere in the world.
Norway had been vying with the UK to set up the first – but their project, at Mongstad, was last night branded too costly.
“The development of full-scale carbon dioxide capture at Mongstad is discontinued,” Norway’s oil and energy ministry said.
The plan had been to capture carbon emissions from a natural gas plant at the site, which also hosts an oil refinery, and pipe them into underground storage on the Norwegian continental shelf. That would remove the gas from the atmosphere in a step to slow global warming.
But low prices for carbon dioxide emissions and economic slowdown in many European nations had dimmed interest in the technology, the ministry said.
“A full-scale carbon dioxide capture facility is still the objective. The government has, however, concluded, after careful consideration, that the risk connected to the Mongstad facility is too high,” Energy Minister Ola Borten Moe said.
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said in 2007 that Norway would try to lead the world in carbon capture. He said that heavy investments would be Norway’s equivalent of a “Moon landing”.
The Peterhead scheme would be aimed at proving CCS technology can work and become a key weapon in the battle against climate change by capturing 90% of the carbon dioxide from part of the power station, before pumping it into a depleted North Sea gas reservoir.
A Scottish Enterprise study predicted it would help create 1,000 jobs in the north-east.
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