CLIMATE campaigners have slammed parliamentarian pleas for the Chancellor Rachel Reeves to back a controversial new carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility in Aberdeenshire as “a fossil fuel polluters’ pipe dream” today.

A cross-party group of 71 MSPs and 10 MPs wrote to Ms Reeves demanding she release the cash necessary to take the long-delayed Acorn CCS scheme — which would capture carbon released in burning fossil fuels and pump it into depleted North Sea oil wells — into the next stage of development.

Arguing the project could generate £17.7 billion for Britain’s economy, safeguard 18,000 jobs and create 15,000 more, the letter read: “Without it there is no viable route for Scottish industry to decarbonise.