Scotland's energy depends on gas – and we forget that at our peril

I was speaking the other day to a group of energy professionals about the interface between politics and policy-making, though it soon became more about the chasm between policy ambitions and dull old reality.

As is my wont in advance of such occasions, I consulted the National Grid Live website which provides in-time information about which sources of generation are producing our electricity. Even I was startled by what I learned.

The share of our electricity supply which, at that moment, was coming from wind power was a ripple of 3.5 per cent. At the same time, a storming 68.7 per cent was generated from gas. Nor was this a one-off freak.

People need energy on still days when the wind does not blow (Picture: Peter Byrne) | PA

Getting too hung up on targets

I check again as I write and gas sits at 68.6 and wind at 5.4 with nuclear power – thanks, Torness – still contributing a vital ten per cent of baseload. Add in the direct use of gas and around 80 per cent of our power is coming from that fossil fuel.

These figures put some of the nonsense we hear about “100 per cent renewables” in perspective. It is true that in August, more than half of the electricity generated was coming from renewables, mainly wind and solar. That does not offer much consolation in a rather chilly December.

None of this need detract from the ambition of reaching net zero by 2030 or any other high-minded target. However, it should be enough to make sensible politicians or policy-makers think twice about getting too hung up on targets if it means merely postponing the day when they must be recognised as unattainable.

An immediate question, in parallel to ones about how barriers to renewables will be overcome, is pretty simple: “Where is the gas going to come from because, until proven otherwise, we’re still going to need an awful lot of it in order to produce the electricity which will keep the lights on, the cars charged and the wheels of industry turning?”

That question should not be avoided and the answer must be credible. I recall from my own distant days in government when a similar question needed to be answered in order to rationalise ill-advised attempts to eliminate nuclear from our energy mix. At that time, the question was: “Where will the gas come from to provide us with alternative baseload?”

Russian gas

A collector’s item I retained from that period is a civil service briefing which assured me everything would be fine because by 2020, 80 per cent of our electricity would be generated from gas and 80 per cent of that gas would come from Russia. Incredible though it may seem, that was the assumption on which UK energy policy was to be based. My dissent is on the record.

The current relevance of that story is as a reminder of what goes wrong when policy is driven by a political imperative regardless of objective reality. Twenty years ago, the imperative which motivated some of my colleagues was to write nuclear power out of the script. So work backwards, make the numbers stack up and think not of the morrow.

Then along came New Year’s Day 2006 when this blissful delusion came to grief. That was when Russia cut off gas supply to Ukraine for the first time with immediate implications for the rest of Europe. The inconvenient discovery that Putin would use his energy muscle for political ends exposed the folly of that 80-80 model.

A lot happened in 20 years – the rise of Qatar as the world’s leading gas exporter; opening interconnectors with Norway and the continent; an acceleration of the transition to renewables, and so on. But still, as 2024 expires, we remain hugely dependent on gas. So the question remains. Where is it going to come from in 2030?

The imperatives of energy supply

Like many others, my obvious short-term conclusion is that if we are going to need gas, we might as well produce it in our own waters to the optimum extent, as well as bringing it in from the four corners of the Earth. It’s difficult to see why that is even controversial; it certainly isn’t in Norway which is increasing its exploration.

The warning which these National Grid statistics underline is that the direction of travel matters far more than pace. There is a wide-ranging political consensus that pursuit of net zero is virtuous and must happen. However, the scale and pace of that transition needs to take account of other realities and some of the 2030 rhetoric is at risk of becoming counter-productive.

In my talk, I referred as usual to the three imperatives of energy policy – security of supply, affordability and carbon reduction. One of my audience suggested there is now a fourth – social acceptance – and he was right.

There has to be evidence rather than assertion about how all this is going to come together at an acceptable cost in terms of jobs and energy security, as well as money. So let’s assemble the building blocks in logical order, rather than pretend that ambition equates to delivery.

That 3.5 per cent figure is not just caused by the wind not blowing. It’s also about blockages in the grid which mean wind power cannot access it. So the generators are paid huge sums in constraint payments, not to produce electricity. There is an urgent need to push ahead with storage in order to counter intermittency – and pump-storage hydro schemes can also produce lots of well-paid jobs.

Put building blocks like these in place and the targets can be reached, though maybe not by a year which happens to have a “0” at the end of it. How much does that really matter, so long as the commitment is grounded in reality and “just transition” is proven to be more than another glib political phrase?