MOVES to ensure that Scotland cuts its own climate emissions – and is well placed to lead the world in development of clean-up technologies – took a major step forward today, said WWF Scotland.
Says a spokesperson: “The environmental group was responding to the announcement by three of the UK’s largest energy companies to convert an onshore pipeline carrying up to two million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Scotland.” [1]
Commenting on the news, WWF’s climate policy officer, Dr Sam Gardner, said:
“The plan to replace the flow of North Sea gas in this pipeline with the carbon emissions from Longannet is a welcome step forward in moves to clean-up Scotland’s biggest power station with Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) technology.
“Changing the use of existing infrastructure to remove greenhouse gases rather than bringing even more polluting fossil fuels onshore is an important symbol of Scotland’s move toward becoming a green economy.
“The UK Government should move quickly to confirm Longannet as the winner of their interminable CCS funding competition or the UK risks losing a valuable opportunity to lead the world in development of this new technology.
“Using CCS at existing power stations is an important bridging technology in reducing climate change emissions, on the way to a 100 per cent renewable energy future.
“We hope the Scottish Government will ensure that such a future is not jeopardised and reject all attempts to build any new coal-fired power stations, such as that proposed at Hunterston.” [2] [3]
The spokesperson added: “Earlier this year a consortium of Scottish Government, industry and researchers, published a study suggesting that 13,000 new Scottish jobs could be created by 2020 from deploying Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology in Scotland.” [4]
ENDS
NOTES TO EDITORS:
[1] Energy giants’ plan for new Scots onshore CO2 pipeline, BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-13739552
[2] Carbon capture and storage (CCS) could play a bridging role in the transition to a truly low-carbon, sustainable energy system, reducing emissions from burning coal and gas by capturing CO2 and then transporting it to underground storage sites. However, the process has yet to be proven on a commercial scale.
[3] ‘Carbon Choices – options for demonstrating carbon capture and storage in the UK power sector’ was based on analysis of the potential impact of the CCS demonstration projects on overall GB power sector CO2 emissions commissioned from IPA Energy + Water Economics
The report analysed the entries in the Government’s Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) competition and concluded that doing the trial at Longannet would be the only choice that actually reduced emissions overall.
http://assets.wwf.org.uk/downloads/carbon_choices__final_.pdf
[4] The consortium report is available at www.sccs.org.uk/progress-to-co2-storage-scotland
MEDIA RELEASE posted by WWF Scotland. You too can post media releases (aka press releases) on allmediascotland.com. For more information, email here.
Contact: Mandy Carter
Phone: 01350 728200
Website: http://www.wwfscotland.org.uk
