WWF today urged Peel to drop its plans for a £3 billion carbon capture and storage enabled 1.6GW coal fired power station at Hunterston. Its call followed Eon’s earlier announcement that its coal station at Kingsnorth would cease generating in 2013 and that it had removed its application for two new units at the site that would have been equipped with carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Eon announced in October 2010 that it had pulled Kingsnorth out of the government’s £1 billion CCS competition . The competition was then temporarily shelved when the last remaining scheme, Scottish Power’s project at Longannet, also withdrew because it needed more money.
A spokesperson for Peel said Eon’s decision was made a long time ago and “was not relevant” to the Hunterston project. He also pointed to the Scottish government’s updated energy policy statement, issued last week, which stated that CCS was still in the government’s plans.
The policy document states that: “The Scottish electricity generation mix cannot currently, or in the foreseeable future, operate without baseload and balancing services provided by thermal electricity generation… The construction of a minimum of 2.5 GW of new or replacement efficient fossil fuel electricity generation progressively fitted with Carbon Capture and Storage would satisfy security of supply concerns.”
However, WWF Scotland director Richard Dixon insisted that Peel Group “should cut their losses, listen to the record number of objectors and walk away from their wildlife-trashing, climate-wrecking plans.
He said “new coal should have no place in Scotland’s energy future, which should instead be built on increased use of renewables and energy efficiency”.