The Real Emissions of Peterhead-CCS

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The Real Emissions of Peterhead-CCS

Carbon Tracker analysis finds serious shortcomings in the Environmental Impact Assessment report of Peterhead-CCS

Lorenzo Sani

28 October 2024

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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.

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