Peterhead power station’s new assessment finds it will produce nearly three times the carbon pollution SSE had claimed

Climate campaigners have called on Scottish Ministers to reject plans for a new gas burning power station in Peterhead. Notably, the demand comes after the developer SSE was forced to admit it will be nearly three times more damaging for the climate than initially feared.

SSE’s Peterhead power station: Scottish ministers must stop polluting project

In the face of growing public concern, the energy giant produced a new Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the project. This time, the company admitted to the inevitable climate emissions the project would generate from extracting the gas and transporting it to burn at the proposed Aberdeenshire site.

Campaigners warn that the new figures are likely still to be a “gross underestimate” of climate emissions. This is because companies have never achieved SSE’s estimates of carbon capture rates at the power plant anywhere in the world.

Independent research in 2024 found the Peterhead power station project could be up to five times more polluting than SSE had originally admitted in official planning documents. Despite the concerns raised about the climate impact of the proposals, Scottish Ministers failed to order the company to redo its EIA.

The new assessment revealed that:

• The plant’s lifetime pollution is set to rise from 6.3 million tonnes to 17.1 million tonnes.
• Annual emissions are set to be 682,610 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per year.
• SSE estimate the new station would burn gas from 2030 until 2055. This would take it 10 years past Scotland’s net zero target date.
• The existing gas burning power station at Peterhead is one of Scotland biggest polluters and will run concurrently until 2040.
• A 75% carbon capture rate is thought to be a more realistic estimate of the plant’s operation (70% is the minimum consistent capture level required to qualify for UK government subsidy). SSE’s claims that the plant would capture 90% of the carbon dioxide it produces have never been achieved and are not supported by evidence.

No new fossil fuel infrastructure: climate activists call out sham carbon capture claims

Friends of the Earth Scotland’s climate campaigner Alex Lee said of Peterhead power station:

SSE has been forced to admit its plans for new gas burning at Peterhead would be a climate disaster for decades to come. The climate case for this project was always desperately weak and now it is in tatters. Scottish Government Ministers must reject it completely.

Even the tripling of its climate harm is likely to be a gross underestimate because of SSE’s wildly exaggerated claims about how much carbon it aims to capture. This entire scheme is built on the rotten foundations of carbon capture, which decades of evidence has made clear will not work.

New fossil fuel infrastructure will lock household electricity bills to the volatile international price of gas and keep people trapped in this exploitative energy system that has produced widespread fuel poverty and climate breakdown.

They continued:

The Scottish Government should be embarrassed by its failure to ever properly interrogate the claims of SSE or order a new environmental assessment when concerns were raised.

Ministers can save some face now by scrapping these plans and investing in climate solutions that we know will work today and improve lives – upgrading public transport, insulating homes and creating green jobs in credible industries with a secure future.

44 climate and fuel poverty groups wrote to the First Minister in May 2024 urging him to reject this project. A further 13,000 strong petition against the proposals was also submitted to the Scottish Government last autumn.

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