UK: Wirral Borough Council leader Paula Basnett will write to UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to urge the government to scrap the Peak Cluster CO₂ pipeline project, according to local press. The €69m scheme will transport CO₂ from cement and lime plants in Derbyshire and Staffordshire for storage in depleted gas wells in the Irish Sea. Local residents and campaign groups have opposed the project, with nearly 17,000 people signing a petition.
Campaign for the Protection of Rural England representative Jackie Copley said “When the government are weighing the balance between the benefits and the harm of projects like this, make sure those landscape harms are fully weighed in the balance. Because at the moment it feels like development is almost automatic, as if it does not matter what’s happening to the landscape.”
Peak Cluster chair David Parkin said “We acknowledge a 200km pipeline is a very significant infrastructure project and will have a level of construction disruption. The main process we are going to do is called trenched construction so essentially, we dig a large trench in a field, we weld up the pipe, drop it in, put the soil back and then the farmer can re-use the field as it was before.”
