SCOTLaND S chances of becoming a global hub for carbon capture will be severely reduced if the project at Longannet power station in Fife collapses, industry experts have warned.  Should Scottish Power and the UK Government fail to reach an agreement on the troubled ?1.2 billion project, which is supposed to lead to the world s first carbon-capture demonstrator project by 2014, it will mean that the central North Sea risks missing out on being the main storage centre for the technology, to be used by all adjacent power stations here and in Europe.  This is despite the fact that Scottish waters are thought to contain roughly half the storage capacity for the whole Continent. It also greatly endangers the Scottish Government s targets to de-carbonise the country.  There have been suggestions that Scottish and Southern Energy s gas-fired Peterhead power station could pick up the mantle instead, but the Sunday Herald understands that it will be delayed by the fact that the first phase of the European New Entrant Reserve (NER300) scheme favours subsidising carbon-capture and storage (CCS) demonstrators on coal-fired stations.  Were Peterhead to be selected for a subsidy in the second phase, it is highly unlikely that it would be built before 2017. This would be two years later than various plants elsewhere in Europe are likely to be built.  Two other project options for the UK are equally unlikely to favour the central North Sea. The proposed Hunterston station in ayrshire wants to pipe its waste south to the Irish Sea while the proposals at Don Valley in Yorkshire are likely to pipe into waters off that coast.  Stuart Haszledine, the Scottish Power Professor of Carbon Capture and Storage at Edinburgh University, said:  We are still in a global race here. The people that get in first have a very good chance of capturing CCS delivery for the next 30 to 40 years. Storage in the central North Sea would be an extension of life for North Sea enginee