Exclusive:John Swinney 'running out of patience' over key Scottish carbon capture project

The First Minister vented his frustration at the years-long delays for Westminster to provide funding for the Acorn carbon capture and storage project in the North East.

Speaking on The Scotsman’s The Steamie podcast, Mr Swinney said he was “promised” the project would have funding committed by the previous Tory government and questioned Labour’s economic growth agenda after Scotland missed out on key funding from the Chancellor.

It was initially hoped the Acorn carbon capture project would be up and running by the end of the decade and delays have contributed to Scotland scrapping its 2030 target to cut emissions by 75 per cent.

Despite doubts still remaining over the use of carbon capture technology at commercial scale, the Acorn project could be used to mitigate emissions from the oil and gas sector, as well as play a key role in decarbonising Grangemouth.

The First Minister suggested Chancellor Rachel Reeves could have used her growth strategy, unveiled on Wednesday, to help save the refinery at Grangemouth. The refinery is set to be closed by Petroineos by the summer, with 400 direct jobs at the plant to go over the next two years.

Instead, not a single project in Scotland was allocated funding by the Chancellor.

Mr Swinney stressed that “a really important part of my programme is to build the wealth of the county”.

He said: “I’m so disappointed with many of the announcements made by the UK government. These announcements - a super computer corridor in Oxford and runways all over the south of England - these are not going to have an economic benefit for Scotland.

“We’ve got a huge refinery in Grangemouth that we need to secure a new future for and there wasn’t a penny for that.”

Asked if he had hoped funding would be handed over from the Treasury to key Scottish infrastructure projects, Mr Swinney said: “I’m running out of patience on the stalling on the carbon capture and storage.

“The Acorn project should have been given the green light years ago. We were mucked about on it by the last Tory government. I was promised that there would be a green light given to that project as part of an inter-governmental deal with the UK government. It never happened."

The First Minister added: “I’ve pressed the Prime Minister for progress on this Acorn carbon capture and storage project and it’s not happened yet.

“When I see all these projects announced and we’ve got a super computer corridor in Oxford, all these runways and all this investment in the south of England - and we’ve got Grangemouth, carbon capture and storage and a cancelled supercomputer for the magnificent University of Edinburgh not going anywhere.

“I’m thinking wait a minute, where’s the focus on growth? These projects are ready to go like that and we’re not seeing that. I just question how solid this agenda of growth actually is.”