On 14th May, while activists from around the world gathered in Stavanger to protest at the Equinor's annual general meeting, activists in Scotland staged a protest of their own at Equinor’s office in Aberdeen against the proposed Peterhead Power Station. Equinor is working with Scottish energy company SSE to build the Peterhead Power Station, which would be located in the North East of Scotland.
Their message was clear: Scotland will be fossil free. The transition away from fossil fuels is both necessary and inevitable. It will happen thanks to people power – not the oil and gas industry.
Opposition against the Peterhead Power Station
Activists also brought messages to Equinor from people around Scotland and stuck them onto the office windows on post-it notes.
The protest highlighted two of Equinor’s polluting projects in Scotland – a new gas burning power plant in Peterhead, and the Rosebank oil field.
The firm’s plans to build a new gas burning power station in Peterhead would lock Scottish households into reliance on unaffordable fossil fuels for decades to come.
The existing power station in Peterhead has been Scotland’s biggest polluter for the last five years, and the new plant would significantly increase the emissions from the site. The Scottish Government must use their power to reject the new fossil fuel infrastructure at Peterhead.
Campaign to stop the Rosebank oil field
The Rosebank oil field, which got the green light from the UK Government last year, is the biggest undeveloped oil field in the North Sea and would produce the equivalent emissions to 28 low-income countries’ annual emissions combined if all its reserves are burned. There has been huge resistance to the field’s development both before and after the approval from the UK Government, and there are currently two separate legal challenges against the government for its decision making on Rosebank.
You can watch a video of the protest below:
Read more about the campaign against the Peterhead power station and how you can get involved here.