SSE
  • Project name: Peterhead Carbon Capture Power Station
  • Location: Peterhead, Scotland
  • Type of project: Gas plant with CCS
  • Capacity: 910 MW
  • Status: Proposed
  • Starting date: Unknown

Context around the project:

  • There are no official plans to transition the existing gas power station already operating in Peterhead. It is already Scotland’s biggest climate polluter.
  • Addition of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to the new plant planned at a later date. This will be the third attempt to make CCS work at the Peterhead power plant with two previous failures in 2007 and 2015.

What is the problem?

  • It will generate vast quantities of climate-wrecking emissions for the next 25 years or more – well past 2045 when Scotland is supposed to reach net zero. 
  • The existing and the new plants could operate at the same time.
  • CCS has a long history of being over-promised and under-delivered by major polluters. It will not reduce other harmful pollutants like methane and ammonia.
  • The plan to store any captured carbon under the North Sea is fraught with difficulties and unknowns and could help turn that region into Europe’s carbon dumping ground.