Scotland wants an offshore power revolution

The author is chief of the Scottish Labour occasion

Scotland is on the cusp of an offshore power revolution — regardless of each the Scottish Nationwide occasion and the Conservatives’ finest makes an attempt to squander it.

Nowhere is that this missed potential clearer than within the case of ScotWind. The seabed leasing undertaking has already given corporations the rights to develop as much as 25 gigawatts of energy off Scotland’s coasts and to construct a few of the largest floating wind farms on this planet.

Whereas these are welcome developments, they fail to profit from Scotland’s potential as a result of the general public has not been given a direct stake. Licences bought cheaply to overseas corporations (themselves typically state-owned) and weak procurement phrases imply the SNP authorities has fairly actually left cash and jobs on the desk.

We’re within the ludicrous place the place Vattenfall — a publicly owned firm in Sweden — will revenue extra from wind farms off our coast than taxpayers in Scotland.

This isn’t the one instance of a wasted alternative. The SNP promised the nation a nationwide power firm — this has now been scrapped. A nationalist dedication to 130,000 inexperienced power jobs that may flip Scotland into “the Saudi Arabia of renewables” has vanished like a mirage.

The failure to reform planning legal guidelines leaves shovel-ready renewable tasks languishing, whereas the 2 governments in Holyrood and in Westminster marvel aloud about how one can put together for a simply transition from fossil fuels, together with within the North Sea. Geography has surrounded the nation with the means to generate inexperienced energy, populated by folks with concepts to make it occur. We’d like change to verify Scottish companies and customers reap the advantages of power manufacturing on our shores.

Keir Starmer has dedicated to the creation of Nice British Power — a brand new publicly owned producing firm — within the first yr of a Labour authorities. GB Power would remodel the UK, and Scotland inside it, into an power superpower. It’ll harness the ability of Scotland’s wind and waves (and sure, some solar) to create a whole lot of 1000’s of jobs by 2030, minimize power payments and ship power safety for our nation. It will change lives and ship on web zero targets.

Take ferries, for instance. The SNP managed to show the development of two new ferries for Scotland’s state-owned Scottish ferry operator from a bit of native problem into a global image of bungled procurement. Among the many weirder choices was the selection to make the 2 ferries, already 5 years overdue and hundreds of thousands of kilos over funds, run on liquid pure gasoline and diesel. LNG is the Betamax video of ferry fuels — the flawed reply that results in a technological lifeless finish and won’t energy the longer term.

On one other western seaboard, in San Francisco Bay, a brand new fossil-free ferry, powered by hydrogen gasoline cells, is being trialled. In Norway, at all times an essential comparator for oil-rich Scotland, two hydrogen-fuelled ferries are deliberate for 2025 which can use 85 per cent inexperienced energy. Nearer to residence, Caledonian Maritime Property, the state-owned ferry supplier, is concerned in a undertaking in Orkney to develop a small, inter-island ferry propelled by carbon-neutral hydrogen gasoline. It’s predicted that inside a decade, most ship site visitors will transfer utilizing this type of gasoline.

These tendencies counsel that we must always use the wind energy from across the coast of Scotland to provide clear gasoline to energy our ferries, container ships and far else in addition to. Hitting the UK’s 10GW goal for inexperienced hydrogen by 2030 would make the UK a world chief, offering clear storable energy, decarbonising our industries and making certain a safe provide.

For greater than a decade, relating to capitalising on Scotland’s power assets, we now have had ministers in each Edinburgh and London who haven’t made good on their guarantees. It’s time to cease squandering our potential for producing inexperienced energy and the high-skilled jobs that go along with it.