Our politicians must have the courage to rethink energy policy

The Herald Scotland

6 days ago

Transmission charging is a legitimate issue which has been around for decades. However, nothing has changed since the ScotWind licences were applied for and gobbled up. So why are companies which bought them (cheaply) now sabre-rattling about walking away?
Possibly, they feel in an increasingly strong position to do so in the absence of other options for governments which have bet the house on offshore wind. Or maybe it reflects growing nervousness among institutional investors about the sector. Or maybe a bit of both.
Read more by Brian Wilson
Any way, these threats demonstrate the vulnerability that this one-club approach is leading us into. What if half a dozen ScotWind licensees decided for their own reasons to abandon or put on hold the projects? By their standards, the money paid for licences is small change. Where is Plan B?
Yesterday, a study by Bloomberg warned that even as things stand, the UK is likely to fall far short of its offshore wind target for 2030 on which the net zero strategy depends, with only a small number of projects going ahead before that date.
Studies come and go, circumstances change … but these doubts being cast on assumptions which underpin the whole net zero enterprise surely need to be taken seriously and become part of the mix which demands a rethink of the current target-led fixation.
At present, a lot of things are happening in isolation but nobody seems to be joining them up into a coherent strategy which the public – also known as the electorate – can sign up to. If that void continues to exist, it is likely to be filled by scepticism towards objectives which need not be in dispute.
In fairness, part of the problem – which did not exist in the past – is the fragmentation of responsibilities. Both UK and Scottish governments have fingers in the pie, not to mention a regulator, Ofgem, which has far too much power to frustrate the potential for clear-cut policy.
The great majority of people subscribe in principle to the idea of a 'just transition' towards renewable power. At the moment, however, they have difficulty seeing anything very 'just' about what is happening as jobs disappear in the North Sea without any clear plan in place to replace them.
Vast sums are already being spent on infrastructure but as Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB union, pointed out, neither the skills nor the manufacturing capacity are in place to turn that into jobs. 'We seem to have fired the starting gun without being race ready', as he put it.
That is a pretty serious indictment of neglect over the past decade when the transition was much spoken of but little planned for. Far too many politicians who should have been ensuring the reality of a 'just transition' were motivated by a desire to kill off the North Sea as quickly as possible without genuine concern for what happened next.
Much is written about Reform UK and its positioning on race and immigration. However, its biggest recruiting sergeant at present, at least in Scotland, is its commitment to scrap what it refers to as 'net stupid zero targets', the virtue of which other parties have pretty much taken for granted.
Looking across the Atlantic, it not difficult to see how this polarisation of attitudes translates into votes and the less credible the march towards 'clean power' appears to be, the greater the risk will be of that baby being thrown out with the bathwater of populist politics.
That tipping point in public opinion may be closer than governments in either Edinburgh or Whitehall care to admit. There are multiple reasons why it would make sense to recognise that running down the North Sea prematurely, while we will still need oil and gas for decades to come, may be politically unsaleable – as it deserves to be.
Any uncertainty which surrounds the delivery of offshore wind developments and the promised jobs that go with them can only add to the belief that an urgent reset is required.
Gary Smith, General Secretary of the GMB (Image: Colin Mearns) Setting dates to meet unrealistic targets and clinging to them in the face of unpalatable evidence delivers nothing. The pace of travel is less important than the direction and it has always seemed likely that the transition could be accelerated, rather than inhibited, by maximising synergies with the existing North Sea industry.
Politicians need the courage to acknowledge these realities sooner rather than later and for guidance we could look to history.
Above a certain age, everyone in Scotland associated hydro electricity with the name of Tom Johnson, the Secretary of State for Scotland who won the blessing of Winston Churchill to launch the great hydro construction boom, while war still raged.
Jump forward 20 years and we entered the age of nuclear power. Again there was political leadership and a sense of mission. Anthony Wedgwood-Benn, as he then was, personified the Wilson government's drive to harness 'the white heat of technology' which civil nuclear power epitomised.
Each of these energy revolutions has served Scotland exceedingly well but neither would have happened without the clear political will to face down opposition and drive them through. As it happens, each provided us with low-carbon sources of electricity, long before 'net zero' was heard of.
Our current energy revolution would be in a lot better place if the same political leadership could exist. Politicians in both Edinburgh and London could surely agree that an energy policy which they expect people to buy into must also be recognisable as common sense and a genuinely 'just transition'.
Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003