Scotland and the UK’s decarbonisation strategy needs to extend beyond the energy industry to become a full-scale industrial transformation.
Taking carbon out of the country’s economy will be the big issue discussed at DeCarbScotland, organised by industrial decarbonisation representative body NECCUS, in Edinburgh on 13 March.
Speaking to Energy Voice, NECCUS CEO Dr Philippa Parmiter said: “People have focused on the energy transition and using carbon capture and storage (CCS) on fossil fuel power plants. But we’ve moved away from that. It’s applicable across the economy, and we need to talk about an industrial transformation rather than the energy transition.”
In addition to hearing from Scottish minister for climate action Alasdair Allan, the event will see representatives from several companies and bodies discussing their ongoing projects.
This includes Ineos, which will talk about Project Willow, the plan to renovate Scotland’s Grangemouth refinery to contribute to the country’s net-zero ambitions.
Veri Energy will also explore plans for the Sullom Voe terminal on Shetland and Storegga, which is developing the Track 2 Acorn project, and National Gas and SSE Thermal will also be presenting.
Opportunity for Scotland
“The key thing we’re interested in is the opportunity for Scotland,” Parmiter said.
“For carbon capture, we’ve got huge storage capacity – potentially 78 gigatonnes in the UK and Scotland has 2/3 of that.”
With emissions of around 40m tonnes per year, this equates to hundreds of years of storage capacity. This presents a market to offer storage services for European consumers, creating revenue and driving global decarbonisation targets.
It also represents a chance to develop a UK and Scotland-based supply chain to develop the projects.
“There’s a strong feeling that local content wasn’t there in the development of the wind sector,” Parmiter noted.
“We’ve got an opportunity to make sure that local content is present this time, in green hydrogen and blue hydrogen, CCS and the general electrification of industry.
“But that means there’s a rapid scale-up needed for the supply chain and understanding what local content means, how it’s measured in terms of the value to the economy and the carbon footprint.”
With Scotland focusing on the idea of a just transition, ensuring that the wealth created by green projects is spread out across multiple stakeholders, jobs are an essential part of decarbonisation – new jobs and retaining old ones.
© PA“We need to avoid the deprivation and decline that resulted from the closure of the coal industry,” Parmiter said.
“The message we get from our members is that blue hydrogen can be used to create jobs and manufacturing here. Let’s grow that manufacturing base in Scotland rather than exporting it.
“That’s where there’s potential in Grangemouth – there’s a huge possibility of attracting inward investment for things like efuels, sustainable aviation fuel and green and blue hydrogen.”
Grangemouth
The future of Grangemouth and the upcoming Project Willow report will be a major topic of discussion at DeCarbScotland.
Owner and operator Petroineos previously pledged to transition the site to becoming an import terminal in the second quarter of this year.
Project Willow will explore other uses for Grangemouth that could help retain the jobs of 500 workers employed at the plant, with 400 to be cut over the next three to 18 months.
Scottish energy secretary Gillian Martin has said that the final checks on the £1.5m Project Willow report are underway, with its release expected soon after being promised at the end of February.
The UK government recently promised to provide £200m from the National Wealth Fund, and the Scottish government has pledged a further £25m this year, bringing its total investment to £87m.
DeCarbScotland
An integral part of this is ensuring that decarbonisation does not amount to deindustrialisation of the UK and Scottish economies.
“We need those technologies like CCS and direct air capture to offset some of the harder to abate sectors,” Parmiter explained.
“Storage is one of the key technologies that actually enables negative emissions.”
Aberdeenshire’s Acorn CCS project, being developed by Storegga along with Shell, Harbour Energy and North Sea Midstream Partners, is at the heart of Scotland’s decarbonisation journey.
However, as a Track 2 project, developers have raised concerns that it is being left behind as focus is drawn to the Track 1 developments, which have access to nearly £22bn of funding.
© Supplied by StoreggaAn open letter urged the UK to put its weight behind the project to safeguard thousands of jobs and billions of pounds of investment.
The challenge of developing CCS, given the scale of the infrastructure needed to do so, makes government backing essential to bringing them to fruition.
“It’s all about bringing down those costs,” Parmiter said. “But of course, you only bring down the costs by doing. We’ve seen that in wind, so we have to start doing it.”
With the first-of-its-kind major projects still coming in the pipeline, government will play a key part in providing the backing for them, helping manage the risks inherent to early movers.
“That’s key when you’re doing these large infrastructure projects for the first time, you need to have some security around investment,” Parmiter noted.
“But it should be recognised that industry has already invested millions and millions in this. We’ve been on a rollercoaster ride with CCS – not a fast one, but it’s key to understand that industry is investing.
“However, the longer we push out the timelines, the more we’re putting the rollout at risk.”
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