UK must not give China the power to switch off our windfarms

The UK needs to ensure it has ultimate control over its energy supplies, not China's President Xi Jinping (Picture: Wang Zhao) | AFP via Getty Images

While the world is focused on the chaos being created abroad by Donald Trump, there is a more insidious threat to our security emerging at home. As we ramp up our efforts to hit net-zero targets, the danger of relinquishing control of our energy, and potentially our national security, to China becomes a reality.

Chinese companies can produce what is useful to us for the development of renewables, particularly windfarms, and we can benefit from their investment. But in that process lies the potential threat which Westminster and Holyrood need to recognise and respond to.

Chinese company Mingyang is staking its claim to produce turbines for a project in the North Sea – Europe’s largest, floating, offshore windfarm off the coast of Aberdeenshire. The Green Volt North Sea farm is a joint project involving Japanese and Italian-Norwegian companies for which the Treasury is reportedly about to approve Mingyang as the supplier of wind turbines.

The problem arises over who will have control of the software allowing, amongst other things, the energy to be switched on and off. It is established practice for producers of wind turbines and general wind farm infrastructure to maintain control of the software involved.

That would not only allow Chinese companies control of the energy, but potentially also the ability to install monitoring capability and make regular visits to check or upgrade the machinery.

In parliament last week, I raised the fact that around £60 million of Scottish Government funding has been earmarked for a wind turbine factory near Inverness to be operated by Mingyang, in addition potentially £27m for Orient Cable to provide subsea cables for island communities.

All this is despite the European Union bringing anti-trust cases against China, and the Norwegian Government recently blocking Mingyang from its green infrastructure projects.

What we need is clear assurances from the UK Government that before Chinese companies are given access to our energy network, they will face the same rigorous risk assessment process which ultimately blocked Huawei from the 5G network.

That must include an assessment of any opportunities for remote access to the turbines, or their vulnerability to being switched off.

We also need the UK Government to talk to its counterparts in Holyrood to ensure that while we wish to secure jobs in manufacturing the turbines, public money is not spent before risk assessments have been undertaken.

If they do go ahead, we need mitigations in place which guarantee vital local control of all facilities and functions. We must not make our energy integrity or national security the price we pay for achieving net-zero targets.

If anyone were in any doubt about the credibility of the concerns, they only had to acknowledge that one of the loudest voices in support of these measures is Conservative Iain Duncan Smith. He is one of those sanctioned by the Chinese government for daring to speak out against the treatment of Hong Kong citizens and Uighur Muslims.

We have also witnessed abuses by Chinese authorities here, with revelations about so-called Chinese ‘police stations’ in this country and concern over the activity of Confucius Institutes.

The world is becoming a more dangerous place. We cannot sleepwalk into giving away the building blocks of our security.

Christine Jardine is Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West