John Hutton: what effects will the SNP government's opposition to new nuclear plants have in Scotland?

Published on Saturday 29 March 2008 22:07

Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform

Our country faces its most important energy challenge in a generation. No one who understands the science of global warming can dispute the urgency of climate change. No one who wants to keep the lights can dispute the dangers of energy supplies becoming more politicised around the world.

These challenges are faced by many countries around the world. But in the UK this pressure is even more acute. North Sea Oil and Gas reserves are diminishing. We are moving from being a net energy exporter to importer within a decade. This at a time when almost a third of our coal and oil fired power stations will probably close by 2030.

Energy security is one of the things that binds us together as a nation. We have a national grid for a simple reason. We are energy interdependent. Electricity generated in England doesn't stop at the border. Wind power from Scotland flows through the national grid into England. There's a good reason for this. Different parts of our country have different natural resources. For energy security to work for every part of the UK, we have to work together. We can't have a pick and mix approach to energy security in different parts of the country.

Part of that mix for nearly half a century has been nuclear power. It is one of our most important forms of low carbon energy. It gives us 'baseload' power. The power we need when the wind doesn't blow. The power you can depend upon day in day out, night in night out. Our reactor fleet is ageing. All but one of our nuclear power stations will shut down by 2023. That's why the UK Government decided recently to give power companies the option to invest in new nuclear capacity in the UK. It will be a critical source of power to meet our energy security and climate change challenges in the decades ahead.

As well as contributing to energy security, a renaissance of new nuclear across the UK today has the potential to be the most significant economic opportunity for our energy economy since the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas. I don't want Scotland to miss out.

Scotland knows how immense the contribution from North Sea oil and gas was to the transformation of its economy three decades ago. Nuclear has the potential to be just as important to its economic future.

I want Scotland to take every advantage it can of this new reality. Scotland could play a tremendously important role, helping the UK to become the number one place in the world for companies to do business in new nuclear.

Being number one in the world will bring thousands of high skilled jobs to the UK. 10,000 of these alone could be in Scotland. Your companies were key players in past nuclear programmes. You could be well placed to win new orders. But today, Scotland stands to lose out on these economic benefits because the SNP has decided to turn its back on nuclear power.

Whilst the North Sea's oil and gas remains a crucial resource, and we must continue to maximise the economic recovery of our remaining reserves, including the currently stranded gas reserves West of Shetland, we are becoming more reliant on imports.

Of course renewables and new low carbon technologies will play an increasingly important role. But the reality is that it cannot be a case of either renewable or nuclear. An energy policy that ruled out one of our key energy sources would be a disaster for both our energy security and for the economy in Scotland.

Scottish consumers disproportionately benefit from nuclear's existing contribution to our electricity supplies. Nuclear contributes to around a third of to Scottish electricity generation, compared to 19% across the whole of the UK.

This of course could continue if the Scottish Executive had an open mind on the role of that new nuclear could play. Investment in new nuclear could be great news for Scottish consumers and workers.

Companies from across the world increasingly see new build in the UK as a gateway to the rest of the European market and I want Scotland to be a part of that. As politicians we need to work together, both in Westminster and Edinburgh, to secure our low carbon energy future.

Politicisation of energy supplies may be happening abroad but they shouldn't be allowed to happen at home.