Does Scotland need a new fosssil fuel power station?

Some environmentalists argue that CCS should be reserved for industries like cement and steel production where it’s more challenging to find alternatives to fossil fuels which produce the super-high temperatures needed.

They say the electricity sector should focus instead on shifting to renewables like wind and solar.

But the Dundee-born chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Prof Jim Skea, has argued that CCS has an important role to play in energy generation.

He told the Financial Times, external that power stations could be the “anchor” source of carbon dioxide which make it economical to run CCS across larger industrial hubs.

That’s exactly the plan for the Scottish CCS cluster at St Fergus which will pull CO2 from the industrial heartlands around central Scotland such as Grangemouth and Mossmorran.

Finlay McCutcheon, managing director of SSE Thermal, which operates Peterhead power station, says gas provides a flexible means of generating electricity quickly when the National Grid needs it.

He said: “I don’t – and SSE doesn’t – believe that you can have a wholly renewable system.”

He added that energy storage, whether through large batteries or pumped storage hydro schemes, will play an important role during “extended periods” of low wind and solar generation.