Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
1/9/2015
Scotland’s energy system could feasibly be fueled almost entirely by renewable energy by 2030, according to a study published this week commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund. The report argues against a reliance on the eventual development of carbon capture and storage technology, though, stating that the technology is unproven and the possibility that it may not mature for some time presents too great an environmental risk. The study was commissioned, in part, due to a belief by the organization that the Scottish government has relied too heavily on the assumption that Carbon Capture and Storage will be readily available in the near future. “Despite the slow pace of carbon capture and storage (CCS) development globally, the Scottish Government’s Electricity Generation Policy Statement 2013 (EGPS) assumes that CCS will be operating at scale in the next decade, fitted progressively across 2.5gw of gas plant. The Government has already risked high-carbon lock-in by granting consent to a major gas plant at Cockenzie as ‘CCS-ready.’ But with no guarantee that the technology will be commercialised in time,” the study says.
However, the study does include within its ideal fossil free scenario the Peterhead project currently undergoing its Front End Engineering and Design study. The Peterhead project will retrofit CCS technology onto a 385 MW portion of an existing gas-fired power plant in Scotland, transporting the CO2 via the existing Goldeneye underground pipeline and storing it in a depleted gas field in the North Sea. The project is expected to capture about 85 percent of the CO2 from the power station, at 1 million tonnes of CO2 a year, and it would be the world’s first industrial-scale CCS project for a gas power plant. The project is expected to be operational by the end of the decade.
The WWF said in the report that while it does not support a reliance on CCS, it does support the development of the technology. “While Scotland’s abundant renewable resources mean it can enjoy a clean, renewable electricity supply, carbon capture and storage (CCS) has the potential to play a role in cutting emissions globally from existing (fossil fuel) power plants while we transition to a 100% renewable energy future, as well as in decarbonising heavy industry, which currently has few alternatives for reducing emissions other than CCS and biomass. Scotland has the opportunity to demonstrate CCS technology at Peterhead and WWF’s support for CCS is limited to the demonstration programme. For this reason we have included a minimum of 340mw of CCS at Peterhead in all scenarios studied,” the report says.
