Lesley Riddoch: Energy policy is vital to Scotland, but it's being ignored

Orkney has Scotlands highest level of fuel poverty beside Scotlands greatest wind and marine energy potential (pro rata), writes Lesley Riddoch. Picture: Donald MacLeod

BBC Scotland’s leaders debate focused on devolved areas like education – important but hardly pivotal for Westminster candidates. But the Manchester attack and Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on the war on terror mean it’s certain defence and foreign policy will now get an airing. What though for other less dramatic but equally important reserved issues like energy?

From the northerly perspective of the wind, tidal and wave-energy rich Orkney Islands – recovering this morning from another sellout Folk Festival – energy policy is vitally important.

I was last in Kirkwall in 2014, for a BBC independence referendum debate, during which local MP Alistair Carmichael claimed Scotland’s renewables industry was safe in Westminster hands and would be destroyed by a Yes vote. He insisted only the UK could afford the infrastructure improvements to enlarge grid capacity and the subsidy needed for developing technologies like marine energy and offshore wind. Of course it would indeed be easier for a large economy like the UK to bear that burden – if its politicians showed the slightest inclination to do so.

Three years on it’s crystal clear they don’t. Au contraire.

First came the shock post-election announcement in 2015 ending subsidies for onshore wind power. Scotland was particularly hard hit because we supply the bulk of British renewables; 60 per cent of onshore wind and 92 per cent of UK hydro electricity in 2015. All in all Scotland supplies almost a third of the UK renewables total. Then David Cameron scrapped a fund for carbon-capture – a technology he once described as “crucial” - earmarked for Peterhead. And in November 2015, tax relief on investments in community renewables was axed, drawing most new community wind, solar, hydro or biomass projects in Scotland to a premature grinding halt.

If that’s protection, I’d hate to see the effects of active Conservative hostility.

These UK government decisions left Scotland’s renewables industry high and dry - especially energy rich islands like Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles. Orkney has huge wind energy potential and a world-class experimental marine energy centre at EMEC.

But there’s a massive problem of grid connection. The infrastructure that lets Orkney send renewable energy into the grid consists of two measly 30 MW cables – a hangover from days when energy was produced centrally in fossil fuel power stations and pumped to remote areas. Now the direction of travel has reversed entirely. On most days both cables are full of green Orkney electricity heading south and there could be far more - a recent Crown Estates Commission survey found almost 2GW available.

But there’s no room left in the old cables and despite decades of humming and hawing about new, bigger island inter connectors, prospects look bleak for all but Shetland where the controversial 400MW Viking wind farm will apparently justify the cost. That’s because Margaret Thatcher’s decision to privatise the electricity industry had a disastrous, complicating impact on infrastructure decisions. Would-be energy suppliers have had to pay to even discover if there’s space on the grid for their plans. Since they’ve known there is no space on Orkney, they haven’t bothered. So SSE has concluded there’s no demand for a bigger cable and haven’t propose a cable upgrade for Ofgem approval. This ludicrous situation has left Orkney with Scotland’s highest level of fuel poverty beside Scotland’s greatest wind and marine energy potential (pro rata).

A right royal fuss by Orcadians has demonstrated 200MW of viable projects exist - if an inter-connector is built. But the turbines must first be bought and installed with no subsidy or guarantee of connection. So renewable development here has stalled. Which should be of massive political importance. Back in 2014, Alistair Carmichael was Scottish Secretary in a ConDem coalition whose Energy Secretary was fellow Lib Dem Ed Davey. Yet this prominent Lib Dem representing an island constituency couldn’t push through a simple sub sea connector. If it couldn’t happen then, how will it happen now - unless there’s a massive change of heart amongst Westminster parties or further constitutional change puts control over energy in Scottish hands?

Devolving control over energy might look possible but Holyrood control over oil, gas and renewable revenues is never going to happen while our energy resources help plug the UK’s yawning trade deficit.

So there’s hardly a word about renewable energy in the Tory manifestos north or south of the Border. Even though marine renewables tick most boxes in Greg Clark’s new industrial strategy – good for the planet, energy-saving, technologically advanced, with Scottish world-leading expertise and strong export potential - they will never fit the funding priorities of a Westminster government which has chosen to rely on fracking, nuclear energy and gas. UK Labour is not much different.

Meanwhile tomorrow, is the deadline for responses to the Scottish Government’s ambitious new energy strategy. It’s an impressive document - as far as Holyrood can ever totally shape an industrial sector still controlled by Westminster.

Nicola Sturgeon’s government aims to build on Scotland’s impressive record for conversion to green energy production with a target to supply most heat and transport by electrically-powered technologies like heat pumps and electric cars by 2050. This will be delivered by smart local grids which sync local demand for heat and electricity with locally generated power and combine that mix with measures to reduce energy consumption and improve energy efficiency.

With so many constraints on the National Grid, smart local grids are making a virtue of necessity. But if successful, this pioneering approach to energy supply could reverse the top-down nature of energy distribution and revolutionise Scotland’s fossil-fuel and central-belt dominated economy.

The big problem is how to manage investment when so many of the levers lie in the hands of a nuclear-focused UK government. In short, Scotland’s energy profile couldn’t be more different from England. Renewables formed the biggest source of electricity production north of the Border in 2015 (42 per cent) with 35 per cent nuclear and 4 per cent gas. If that pattern was replicated across England, Britain would not be ranked 24th out of 28 European countries for renewable energy production.

So does green energy matter to Scotland and would it be safer in Scottish hands?

Presumably unionist parties have some answers - if the Scottish media dares to ask.