WITH the news that Westminster will not support carbon capture at Peterhead (“Anger as carbon capture scheme is scrapped”, The Herald, November 26), my suspicions have finally been confirmed. Even if something is of benefit to the whole UK, if it could simultaneously boost the economy of Scotland but risks encouraging hope of another referendum, it must be blocked.

Here we have a process invented and developed in Scotland, ready for trial a few years ago at Peterhead, with the backing even then of Shell and BP and, through them, with some of the infrastructure already in place, but it was rejected out of hand by the UK Government. Yet at that same time we knew that there were renewable energy and carbon reduction targets to be met, while older power stations would soon be unable to provide the base load we would need. Moreover, no other nation in the world had yet developed this system, meaning that if this trial was a success, Scotland would be a world leader, able to sell the technology around the world.

Was our mistake pointing out the benefit to the Scottish economy when there was an independence referendum looming? Instead, Westminster opened up a competition, offering £1 billion to any power station that could satisfy its conditions for taking forward a carbon capture project. Presumably, the idea was to encourage a facility in England to put in the winning bid and so implementation could be delayed until after the referendum, and still benefit the UK without any particular boost to Scotland. Longannet then came into the picture as a feasible site and could well have been saved from closure, in addition to supplying the base load we now will lack, but it too was turned down.

Now that all other bidders have withdrawn, one could not be blamed for assuming that the prize would automatically be awarded to Peterhead, the original world leader and the “only man left standing”. But no, the deal is taken off the table. Why? An odd competition, surely, where the two Scottish bidders with the strongest cases were turned down, the English ones withdrew and the offer was then cancelled at the earliest opportunity. And meantime some of those countries to whom we could have sold our expertise have developed it for themselves and our chance to boost the economy is gone.

So here we go again in Scotland, being forced to buy back the product of our own discoveries and inventions or invest heavily and far too expensively in foreign schemes, like the Hinckley point deal. And in any case we need taught a lesson for daring to come close to voting for independence

Are we really, as usual, going to roll over and play dead when we are told? Can some of those new Scottish millionaires and billionaires we hear about these days not rustle up the necessary billion between them to bring this home-grown, environmentally friendly and potentially highly profitable scheme to fruition – perhaps with some crowdfunding to top things up from those who have faith in our country and our ingenuity? Even on my small income I’d buy into that.

P Davidson,

Gartcows Road, Falkirk.

I WELCOME the Government decision in the Spending Review to cancel the competition for carbon capture storage (CCS). This is long overdue and final recognition that the competition represented a very poor use of taxpayers’ money. Having worked on CCS projects for an oil major in the recent past it was always clear that such projects in the UK were hopelessly uneconomic requiring a level of subsidy running into the billions that neither shareholders nor taxpayers could rationally afford or defend. The North Sea is an extremely high cost environment to undertake any investment, requiring high-financial returns and investors with deep pockets. CCS technology is unproven and most projects offer dismal returns at best. The low oil price has eliminated the ability of the oil companies to invest; opportunities that might have been a dream at $100 per barrel are a nightmare at sub-$50. It was always delusional to expect CCS to be undertaken in the UK but the potential served the purpose of excellent public relations for the stakeholders, particularly the oil companies and grandstanding politicians. Like so many aspects of the climate change debate, solutions are invariably overhyped and deployment costs manifestly underestimated.

The Treasury was always hostile to the competition from the outset and now it has finally had its way, there is little doubt the competition would have been closed five years ago, but Coalition politics prevented it. Perhaps the most regrettable aspect of this process is the enormous waste of management time in both industry and government that has been expended over the last 10 years, preparing for a competition that the Government privately was never committed to. The salutary lesson is that business should always be extremely cautious in pursuing projects that require very large subsidies to support commerciality.

Raymond Hall,

The Firs, Gartness Road, Killearn.