Carbon Tracker analysis finds serious shortcomings in the Environmental Impact Assessment report of Peterhead-CCS
This analysis estimates the real emissions of the proposed Peterhead gas power plant with carbon capture by SSE & Equinor.
We found serious omissions and shortcomings in the developer’s Environmental Impact Assessment report, resulting in a severe underestimation of the project’s climate impact.
The underestimate is driven by three major factors:
- omissions of emissions related to the supply of natural gas,
- emissions during periods of unplanned outage of the carbon capture plant are not estimated,
- capture rates might be lower than claimed by the developers.
We found that the lifetime emissions of Peterhead-CCS could be three to five times higher than reported by the developer.
As a result, the project would have a Major Adverse impact on the Scottish carbon budget. Worryingly, the project will continue its operations past the Scottish 2045 carbon neutrality target, thus necessitating a substantial increase in costly and unproven carbon removal technologies.
While this report focuses on the Peterhead-CCS case study, these issues extend well beyond this project. Carbon Tracker has identified this as a structural problem, with similar under-reporting errors found across all gas-based CCUS projects currently under development in the UK.
