Two Norwegian carbon capture projects - used by the Scottish Government to justify its support of the controversial technology - reportedly faced problems which could have caused carbon dioxide (CO2) to leak. The Scottish Government is a big financial backer of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and claims Scotland has the potential to be the "centre of a European hub" for CO2 storage. CCS involves catching CO2 from the production and burning of fossil fuels, or other dirty industrial processes, and storing them under the ground or the sea. As long as it stays in place, this stops the CO2 entering the atmosphere and contributing to the climate crisis. Scottish ministers have pointed to the apparent success of CCS at the Sleipner and Snøhvit gas fields in Norway as proof that its reliance on the technology to help Scotland meet its climate targets is "credible". But recent analysis of expert research on the two projects by the global think tank, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), found that both projects had seen unexpected storage behaviour "that could have led to leakage". FFS explains: carbon capture and storage Rather than being lauded as "pioneers" of CCS as they have been by the Scottish Government, Sleipner and Snohvit's issues should actually "call into question the long-term technical and financial viability" of storing carbon underground, the IEEFA report argues. Environmental campaigners said the research showed the Scottish and UK governments had "fallen for industry greenwash" on CCS. Because there are no large-scale CCS projects operating in the UK, attempts to store carbon off Scotland's coast would be "proceeding by trial and error", one argued. The Scottish Government pointed out that its independent advisers had described CCS as "a necessity, not an option" to achieve net zero. Its energy secretary, Neil Gray, said studies found "a 'very high level' of confidence in the long-term security of CO2 contained in typical UK CCS storage complexes". The government believes that five million tonnes of CO2 could be stored under the North Sea as soon as 2030. It estimates 46 billion tonnes of CO2 storage capacity exists under Scottish waters. Sleipner and Snøhvit have only stored a combined 22 million tonnes of CO2 in total so far, having first come online in 1996 and 2008, respectively. Both projects capture and store CO2 from the production of natural gas. Despite their relatively small size - and the fact their storage locations were in areas studied extensively - the IEEFA study argues that "CO2 had not behaved as geologists initially expected at either project". At Sleipner in the Norwegian North Sea, CO2 moved upwards from the original storage site into a previously unknown geological layer three years into operations. "Had this unknown layer not been fortunate enough to be geologically bounded, stored CO2 might have escaped," the report claims. Meanwhile, at Snøhvit in the Barents Sea pressure in the storage site "rose rapidly to alarming levels" just a year and a half after CO2 was first injected. The storage capacity there was far lower than predicted by engineers, a problem which required expensive investment to fix. On Monday, the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, announced that Scotland's first CCS facility, the Acorn Project at St Fergus in Aberdeenshire, will receive a share of £20bn of funding from the UK Government. The Scottish Government had already pledged £80m of support for Acorn. The announcement came alongside renewed commitments by Westminster to allow new oil and gas exploration in UK waters. Opponents of CCS claim it distracts from the need to invest in renewables and is being pushed by the fossil fuel industry so that it can continue drilling for oil and gas. Acorn - which lists fossil fuel giants Shell and Harbour Energy as partners - will transport CO2 and store it in old oil and gas reservoirs a mile and a half under the North Sea. Initially this captured CO2 is ...