The carbon capture and storage scheme at Longannet coal-fired power station, in Scotland, was to be the first of its kind in the UK, and would have contributed significantly to government efforts to reduce the country’s CO2 emissions.
The decision, announced by UK Energy Minister Chris Huhne yesterday, has been slammed by environmentalists, and Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond said it was an “enormous lost opportunity”.
Dr Richard Dixon, director of environmental charity WWF Scotland, added: “This news is massively disappointing and threatens Scotland’s – and the rest of the UK’s – ambition to be at the forefront of developing this new technology.
“Almost four years after launching its funding competition, [government] plans for CCS in the UK have descended into farce. Four years have effectively been wasted in the battle to tackle climate change.”
Chris Huhne told parliament yesterday there were “specific problems” with the Longannet scheme over the length of the pipeline required. The UK government was making £1bn available, but it is understood the estimated cost had reached £1.5bn.
He said the government was still committed to CCS and said the £1bn funding would be available for other projects, indicating a renewed interest in Peterhead Power Station – where a CCS scheme was rejected four years ago due, according to some observers, to a lack of government support.
First Minister Alex Salmond said: "At a time when North Sea revenues are coming in at record levels, it was surely not too much to expect that the Treasury would make the necessary funding commitment for Longannet to go forward. The cost would have been less than a tenth of this year's alone estimated North Sea revenues of £13.4bn."
Longannet is the UK's second largest coal-fired power station and Europe's third largest, emitting between seven and eight million tonnes of CO2 every year. If the project had gone ahead, it would have been at the forefront of global moves to deploy commercial-scale CCS.
ZERO said: "We are hugely disappointed that the UK government has failed to make the Longannet project a reality, after nearly four years of waiting, and around £50 million spent by the partners on designs for the groundbreaking technology so far.
"Longannet could - and should - have begun construction this year. It is a risky business to wait and hope for cheaper projects to come along. And there is, of course, no guarantee that other projects will be cheaper.
"It is imperative that governments worldwide deploy CCS projects with the utmost haste if the IEA target of having 100 schemes in operation by 2020 is to be reached.
“If any lessons are to be learned from Longannet, it is that we must stop depending on government subsidies and make CCS a mandatory requirement for all power generation facilities."
Scottish Power’s generation director Hugh Finlay said: “The consortium is immensely proud of the work we have completed in the last four years. Our combined efforts have seen this potentially world-changing technology develop from being a concept in a laboratory to a definitive blueprint that could be implemented.”
