Outrage at 'Mad Ed's' pipeline as net zero drive set to 'desecrate' beauty spots

Furious campaigners are trying to stop "Mad Ed" from building an enormous 124-mile-long net zero pipeline which they claim will destroy ancient woodland and a national park.

The £28.6m Peak Cluster onshore pipeline aims to capture CO2 produced by the cement industry in Derbyshire and Staffordshire and pump it into a huge disused gas well in the Irish Sea.

The Government claims the Carbon Capture Usage and Storage (CCUS) project is vital for hitting zero CO2 emissions targets and will create and safeguard thousands of jobs.

Ed Miliband's Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is ploughing nearly £22 billion into similar projects called clusters across the UK.

Conservative Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chair of the Committee, said Labour were "gambling on carbon capture technology becoming foundational to achieving net zero".

One area targeted by Mr Miliband is the Peak Cluster initiative, which aims to capture carbon dioxide from cement and lime plants and transport it more than 120 miles by pipeline to the Wirral coast.

However, angry campaigners and local councillors have said the plans will decimate the Peak District National Park and damage ancient woodland in the Wirral. They also claim by the time the pipeline is built much of the industry it supports will have shut down. On March 8 and 9, people turned out in their hundreds to protest against the plans in Merseyside and Wirral councillors unanimously decided to write to the UK Government as well as MPs to get the project scrapped.

Laura Beveridge-Muircroft, from Wirral, part of Action Against Carbon Capture and Storage, said consultations with residents so far had been a "shambles".

She said: "The residents really didn't get any answers to anything and the level of detail that they had for a project of this magnitude was appalling. We were just constantly met with, we don't know that, we can't say that, or we're not sure.

"I think there's a lot of arrogance with Peak Cluster, all they keep saying is it's going ahead, it's happening and we're going to do it.

"We're not saying we don't need carbon capture, we're not climate deniers, we are simply a bunch of residents saying that there are better ways, and we need to understand that those ways have been scrutinised to the nth degree before a huge amount of desecration to green belt land and some real old woodland for the sake of a government target.

"I do feel that people have been very arrogant in their response to us and I feel like they think they've got carte blanche on this because it is a government initiative."

Ms Beveridge-Muircroft added: "A lot of local businesses are very concerned about the impact of this.

"People have spent all their efforts and their soul into an area that we care about and that we want people from around the country to come and enjoy.

"And in the blink of an eye that will be taken away from us and we will be sadly quite possibly another long-forgotten industrialised seaside town."

Pointing to alternatives, Ms Beveridge-Muircroft said there was technology available to store the CO2 at the site of the cement works and use it to generate power. She pointed out: "There is a technology that is available and it's being used in France, Germany, Norway, Australia and America, where they capture the carbon at source, process it, then use that processed carbon dioxide to turn that into energy to continually power the plant.

"A by-product of that can actually be turned into a form of filler for the construction industry. I just don't feel like it's been a knee-jerk reaction to a target that we have to meet."

Environmental campaigner and social media star Stuart Cox, known as the Peak District Viking, criticised "Mad Ed" and his "net zero challenge".

He said: "During construction of the pipeline there's going to be a 30-40 metre trench right through from start to finish, and they're going to have pumping stations the size of several football pitches.

"This is a national park, it's a protected landscape, should they really be building this mass swathe through it? It's traumatic for the environment.

"Some of these ecosystems have evolved over millions of years, even pasture takes three to five years to recover, and some of these ancient woodlands and peat bogs, some will never recover from this. They say they will plant a few trees but they might not even be planted in the same area.

"Mad Ed's net zero challenge is going to blight the landscape and bankrupt us eventually, especially when you look at the Iran saga and how we are stopping all the drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, we could be quite a well-off country, but as it is Norway is drilling and selling it back to us."

Like the Wirral campaigners, Mr Cox, whose own protest group have dubbed themselves Peak Clusterf**k, said alternatives to the pipeline were not being considered. He added: "I don't think they've really looked at alternatives. They're just hell-bent on doing this and if you read all the language and all the material they give you, it says, 'we are going to this, we will do this'."

Mr Cox pointed to similar projects in other countries where CO2 was transported via containers on rail or road rather than in pipelines.

Peak Cluster’s onshore pipeline is classified as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) and the decision on whether to grant consent will finally rest with Secretary of State, in this case, Ed Miliband.

Speaking about the consultation process in an interview with the Liverpool Echo, Dave Parkin, chair of Peak Cluster, apologised for the way public engagement has been handled so far and is “clearly disappointed by the strength of feeling on the Wirral”.

Regarding the public consultation in Wirral, he said: "It didn't go as planned and we apologise for that."

However, Mr Parkin added: “If we can gain some local support that would be ideal but I am not expecting widespread public support for this project.

“This is a challenge we face as a modern civilised society is how you balance the national need to do things against local opposition and other understandable concerns about local impact and local safety.”

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) spokesperson said: "Carbon capture, usage and storage is vital for Britain's clean energy future. The Climate Change Committee describes it as a "necessity not an option" for reaching our climate goals.

“We are delivering first-of-a-kind carbon capture projects in the UK, backed by £9.4 billion over this parliament – supporting thousands of jobs across the country and reigniting our industrial heartlands.

“All carbon capture projects must meet strict environmental and regulatory requirements, including ensuring high levels of protection for both communities and the environment.”