Carbon Capture Warning Over Failures At Carbon Capture and Storage projects labelled as "pioneers" by Scottish Government

29th August 2023

Climate campaigners are highlighting research shows that two carbon storage fields in Norway have experienced unpredictable carbon movement underground and reduced storage capacity.

The projects are held up as the industry gold standard. Scottish Government Ministers have previously highlighted these projects as "pioneers" and as successes to justify its funding of, and overreliance on, carbon capture and storage (CCS) to meet climate targets.

The Prime Minister flew to Scotland to announce priority support for the Acorn carbon capture project. The Scottish Government has spoken of being the "centre of a European hub for the importation and storage of CO2 from Europe" effectively turning Scotland into a carbon dumping ground for the rest of Europe.

Sunak announced that the Acorn project will be given a share of a £20 billion pot which has been made available for carbon capture projects over the next ten years. Will it be a waste of money?

Campaigners say that with more attempts to store carbon underground comes more pipelines, more transport movements and more chances of carbon leakage and accidents.

The independent advisors at the UK Climate Change Committee, along with Scottish Parliament's Environment Committee have expressed clear concerns about the ability of carbon capture to work, and have both recommended that Scottish Ministers develop an alternative plan to meet climate targets that does not rely on CCS.

Carbon capture research by IEEFA
Crucially, 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 want 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, this represents over 2000 times the size of the Norwegian projects.

Campaigners say that CCS already risks prolonging the life of the oil and gas industry and distracting from climate solutions that work today.

Norway news ‘raises real red flags'
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."

“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.”