MSP Demands Tories Reinstate Carbon Capture & Storage Funding for Peterhead

Ahead of the UK Budget, Stewart Stevenson MSP has demanded that the UK government reinstates the pledged £1 billion funding for a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) scheme in Peterhead.

Tory Chancellor George Osborne axed £1billion of promised funding for CCS technology in 2015, costing jobs and investment in Peterhead power station, which had been earmarked as a potential CCS site.

This demand comes in light of warnings from world leading scientists in this week’s UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that we have only 12 years to limit global warming to a maximum of 1.5C or risk extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty for hundreds of millions of people across the globe.

SNP MSP for Banffshire & Buchan Coast Stewart Stevenson said:

“Peterhead lost out when the Tories axed £1bn for Carbon Capture and Storage at the eleventh hour in 2015 – a betrayal of the North East of Scotland and of the fight against climate change.

“The Tory government cannot continue to ignore the facts that without a CCS strategy, the UK will be much less likely to meet its climate change targets and it will be twice as expensive to do so.

“The Tories need to take action now and stop starving the North East of vital investment in carbon capture technologies before it’s too late. This is an economic opportunity to create hundreds of jobs and build knowledge for the future in a cutting edge field, but it is also a moral imperative.

“We’ve had enough stalling – the UK Government must now get on with delivering clean industries for the future, starting by reinstating investment in Carbon Capture and Storage in Peterhead.”