Yesterday afternoon (24/01/26), I attended Peak Cluster’s public Hoylake “consultation” — a word doing heroic levels of heavy lifting. What we actually got was a thinly stretched set of PowerPoint slides on a series of stands, vague answers, and the familiar sense that the real decisions will be made somewhere else, by people who don’t live anywhere near the proposed route.
For those who haven’t been following it, Peak Cluster is proposing a high-pressure CO₂ pipeline carrying industrial waste CO₂ from cement and lime works in the Peak District, running across Derbyshire and Cheshire, straight through the Wirral, then offshore to inject those emissions into depleted gas reservoirs beneath the seabed in Morecambe Bay. If approved, this would be the second such pipeline proposal, with the Wirral increasingly being positioned as a convenient staging corridor for exporting industrial waste out to sea.
“ CO₂is clean”…
Except When It Isn’t
During the afternoon session, I challenged the presenters on a very basic question: what exactly would be pumped through this pipe? One presenter openly stated there would be impurities in the CO₂ stream. Another insisted the CO₂ would be “clean”, with no impurities at all.
If there project team cannot agree on basic facts — such as the composition of what they are proposing to push through our communities — then the idea that this constitutes a fair, informed public consultation collapses immediately.
Captured CO₂ from cement manufacturing is not compressed fresh air. It typically contains trace contaminants, which may include mercury, cadmium, sulphur compounds, nitrates, and other industrial by-products. None of this was mentioned. These issues were simply absent missed — as if naming them might complicate the presentation.
Remember if it was pure they could simple sell it
When Challenged,
Talk Longer — Not Clearer
As frustration in the room became obvious, the Managing Director was called out and forced to address the audience. He spoke at length. Unfortunately, much of what he said had little to do with the questions people were trying to ask. It felt less like engagement and more like a tactic: keep talking until the discomfort passes.
Many attendees were visibly frustrated. The Q&A session that followed was just as limited, unstructured, and awkward. If they struggle to manage basic public engagement, it raises an obvious concern: how will they manage genuinely difficult scenarios, such as a leak or system failure?
I spoke to the Managing Director directly afterwards and made my position clear. I am completely opposed to any proposal that would pump industrial CO₂ waste through the heart of the Wirral. The response was to play down the toxicity, carefully avoiding any admission of trace contaminants at all. In my opinion, if they will not speak honestly about what in the pipeline now, it is difficult to see why anyone should trust future assurances about safety.
One Obvious Question……………
No One Answered
There is also a very simple question that somehow never surfaced during the consultation: why the Wirral at all?
If this waste is genuinely safe, why not store it at or near source? Yes, that is difficult — but given the billions of pounds being committed to these schemes, surely better solutions could be explored.
If the captured CO₂ is ultimately destined for offshore storage in the Irish Sea, why route a pipeline across multiple counties and through densely populated communities, only to exit via the Wirral, rather than taking a far more direct route out to sea from somewhere like Blackpool, which is geographically closer to the cement manufacturing site?
This is not a technical footnote. Every additional mile of pipeline increases land disruption, risk exposure, and long-term liability for communities that gain nothing from the scheme. Yet the consultation offered no comparison of routes, no justification for choosing the Wirral, and no acknowledgement that alternatives even exist.
When a route is presented as inevitable without ever being explained, it stops looking like engineering and starts looking like convenience.
Wirral Council, Déjà Vu,
and the Sound of Silence
What makes this more concerning is that this is not the first time these issues have been raised. I raised concerns about a previous pipeline proposal (by ENI, Hamiltonbay liverpool site) and the long-term risks associated with the so-called “forever” Liverpool Bay storage site directly with Wirral Council in September 2025. – look it up its on their website!
At the time, the council’s Environmental committee Lead, Liz Grey (Green Party), promised she would come back to me after checking with the regional committee on the safety aspects of that proposal.
Cllr Grey — I am still waiting, ……..what has it been now? Four months and counting.
Perhaps I need to remind her. Or perhaps, now that public attention is firmly on this new proposal, she will have to remember. Either way, silence from the council on matters of this scale is concerning. It suggests a lack of scrutiny at precisely the point where scrutiny matters most.
Our local council leader, Cllr Basnett (Labour) — what is your view?
Ah right, its your party pushing for this
Why a Petition Exists
This is precisely why I launched a national petition calling for these proposed pipelines to be paused until its safety aspects are properly clarified.
That petition can be accessed at:
Alongside supporting material on the risks and unanswered questions surrounding offshore storage at the sister site for the earlier pipeline proposal:
These are not protest sites, they exist because residents are repeatedly told to “trust the process” while key facts remain vague, contradictory, or quietly avoided.
We were told diesel cars were safe, now we are being told CCS is safe.
Make of that what you will. Projects of this scale are classed as nationally significant infrastructure, which often leaves residents as spectators to decisions that will affect them for generations.
Consultation in Name Only
Peak Cluster tells us this proposal is about jobs, net zero, and safeguarding British industry. Fine. But none of that excuses:
- Contradictory statements about what would actually be in the pipeline
- A complete lack of transparency around toxic trace elements
- Vague reassurances instead of clear risk explanations
Peak Cluster has never managed a CO₂ pipeline. Their response to this — that “all pressure pipes are the same” — was presented to me as expert advice. In my view, that claim demonstrates a worrying level of overconfidence. Pressurised CO₂ behaves very differently from other substances, thermodynamically and chemically, and pretending otherwise is not reassuring.
To me, this is not environmental leadership. It is infrastructure by inertia: propose it, soften the language, and hope resistance runs out of steam.
Final Thought
If this pipeline is genuinely safe, genuinely necessary, and genuinely in the public interest, then Peak Cluster — and those who may ultimately approve it — should have no problem answering direct questions with direct answers now, before anything progresses further.
Until they do, the people of the Wirral have every right to ask why we are being treated less like a community and more like a convenient corridor.
We are no longer the pleasure peninsula — we are in danger of becoming the CO₂ pipeline peninsula.
What You Can Do
Contact your local councillor and insist they oppose this proposal — excuses that “they can’t do anything” are simply not true
Act now: the Peak Cluster process has only just begun
At present, Wirral Reform UK is the only local party actively campaigning against these proposals for over a year now.
If others disagree, now would be a good time for them to say so, raise your concerns on the peak cluster website www.peakcluster.co.uk
There MD advised me, the required way process they have to follow, is to collect concerns (so we need to email them in) and answer them. If they are not answered we can oppose this