A PIONEERING plan to pipe millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide cross country to an undersea store could help push Scotland to the fore in the race to find new ways to cut pollution.

The proposal to create a massive pipeline to pump two million tonnes of carbon dioxide across the country 180 miles from Fife to the North Sea is the first of its kind in the UK.

ScottishPower, National Grid and Shell UK are working together on the plan.

The consortium’s scientists are among the leaders in the global push to find new ways to clean up carbon emissions from the world’s power stations.

National Grid would transport carbon dioxide captured at ScottishPower’s Longannet power station to St Fergus, Aberdeenshire, where it would be pumped offshore to be stored in Shell’s depleted Goldeneye gas field in the North Sea.

Environmental activists yesterday said the move would significantly reduce the carbon dioxide emissions polluting the atmosphere each year. Longannet currently produces about seven million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

The carbon dioxide would be carried through Fife, Falkirk, Stirling, Perth and Kinross, Angus and Aberdeenshire. People living close to the route have been informed and public meetings have been held.

The consortium is awaiting news on a £1 billion subsidy from Westminster for the plan. The Health and Safety Executive and Scottish Environmental Protection Agency have assessed early proposals but as the project is still at the design stage, they will continue to monitor developments.

The work would include building a new 10-mile-long pipeline from Longannet, as well as converting an existing natural gas line from Falkirk to Peterhead.

Dr Sam Gardner, of WWF Scotland, said: “The plan to replace the flow of North Sea gas in this pipeline with the carbon emissions from Longannet is a welcome step forward in moves to clean up Scotland’s biggest power station with Carbon Capture Storage technology. Changing the use of existing infrastructure to remove greenhouse gases rather than bringing even more polluting fossil fuels onshore is an important symbol of Scotland’s move toward becoming a green economy.

“The UK Government should move quickly to confirm Longannet as the winner of their interminable CCS funding competition or the UK risks losing a valuable opportunity to lead the world in development of this new technology. Using CCS at existing power stations is an important bridging technology in reducing climate change emissions.”

Earlier this year, the Scottish Government, industry and researchers published a study suggesting that 13,000 Scottish jobs could be created by 2020 from deploying carbon capture and storage technology.

Juliet Swann, Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: “There may be a role for CCS long-term but in the immediate future all our efforts should be directed towards renewables.”

A National Grid spokeswoman said: “The existing 280-kilometre, or 173-mile, pipeline will require a change of use from natural gas to transport carbon dioxide instead. Work will begin on the new pipeline in 2014, with the overall aim to deliver a full chain post-combustion CCS scheme in 2015.”