Courier Business Awards 2025: Innovation and Technology
Entries are now open for The Courier Business Awards 2025 Innovation and Technology category.
The Courier Business Awards, held in partnership with Henderson Loggie, celebrates the achievements of companies operating in Tayside, Fife and Stirling.
Since the awards started more than a decade ago, we've heard about the exceptional service offered, innovative products and solutions brought to the market and remarkable growth stories.
Entries are now open – we can't wait to hear more about your accomplishments over the past 12 months.
Winning a hotly contested Courier Business Award is a fantastic achievement for any business. It means a winning company is a leader in its sector and can be used to promote its products and services. It is also a boost for staff to know the work they do has been recognised.
Our winners will be announced at a black-tie awards ceremony held at the Apex City Quay Hotel in Dundee this October, which brings together hundreds of business leaders for a night to remember.
Entering is simple and free. We'd love to hear about your business.
The Innovation and Technology category is sponsored by SSEN Transmission.
This award is open to companies who put innovation and/or technology at the heart of their business. This could take the form of changes to systems, adopting or developing new products or services or a creative use of technology. It is also open to businesses who build bespoke platforms/technology solutions for themselves or customers.
Winner will demonstrate:
Entries close at 5pm on Monday July 14.
Click here to enter the Courier Business Awards 2025 Innovation and Technology category.
Thank you to SSEN Transmission for sponsoring the Innovation and Technology category at the Courier Business Awards 2025.
SSEN Transmission is responsible for the electricity transmission network in the north of Scotland, maintaining and investing in the high voltage electricity transmission network.
Its network consists of underground and subsea cables, overhead lines on wooden poles or steel towers, and electricity substations. It extends over a quarter of the UK's land mass, crossing some of its most challenging terrain.
SSEN Transmission is investing over £20 billion to upgrade the network infrastructure across its region between now and 2030 as it gets ready to play a leading role in the clean energy transition.
A spokesperson for SSEN Transmission said: 'SSEN Transmission are proud to support the Courier Business Awards and sponsor the Innovation and Technology category, celebrating the trailblazers shaping the future.'
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‘A day marked by reflection, bold ambition, and a shared sense of purpose'
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The event provided a great platform to share insights into our system's legacy, celebrate recent milestones, and discuss our future plans as we deliver a network for net-zero. As the custodian of our business's power systems analysis capabilities, I was immediately put at ease by the panel chair's opening remark about 'embracing the unashamedly nerdy.' While I suspect this was aimed at the policy and reform discussions ahead, I took it as full permission to dive deep into system planning references. It was a day marked by reflection, bold ambition, and a shared sense of purpose as we collectively navigate the complexities of the energy transition. One message stood out clearly –the Highlands and Islands are not merely a backdrop for green energy, they are central to its success. For SSEN Transmission, this is evident in the scale of investment already delivered in the region, including the Caithness-Moray-Shetland HVDC link. Looking ahead, major projects such as the Spittal–Peterhead HVDC and the onshore 400kV reinforcements are progressing as part of our Accelerated Strategic Transmission Investment (ASTI) plan. Christianna Logan, SSEN Transmission's director of customers and stakeholders, joined the morning panel discussion Progress & Achievements in Green Energy in the Highlands. She highlighted SSEN Transmission's recent milestones in the region, including the energisation of the Shetland Link, enabling the connection of the high-yielding Viking Wind Farm. Christianna also spoke about our new strategic spares warehouse at Dalcross, and the deployment of innovative technologies such as mobile substations and dynamic line rating. We also heard from Sumitomo on their investments at Nigg and their commitment to local supply chains, the Scottish National Investment Bank on the tension between ambition and certainty, the Highland Council on their social value charter and planning consents, and from Highlands and Islands Enterprise on the scale of opportunity. During my panel, I shared how, as power systems engineers, we routinely engage with the legacy of past decisions, working with network models that include assets dating back more than half a century. On these foundations, we layer investment plans that shape the grid of the future. This is not simply a suite of individual projects; it is the ongoing engineering of a power system that must be both technically robust and strategically transformative. Our work bridges generations of infrastructure, ensuring we develop a system that is deeply integrated with policy, people and place. The scale and ambition for renewable energy in the region is now visible to all. When overlaid with SSEN Transmission's ambitious investment plans to further strengthen the grid, it's clear that the Highlands and Islands are exceptionally well positioned to play a leading role in helping the country meet its clean power targets. Connections reform is often central to any discussion around grid capacity, and it was no exception during my panel session. The legacy 'first-come, first-served' approach has led to the 'contractual' sterilisation of both current and future system capacity, locking up grid access. Too often, this is interpreted as the system being at full capacity, implying that no renewable growth can be accommodated. But this blanket interpretation overlooks important system specific context and technical nuance. We're optimistic that the implementation of connections reform and queue management will shift the model to a 'First Ready and Needed, First Connected' approach. 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The successes and challenges of Scotland's clean energy transition
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Scotsman
6 hours ago
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'New game, old rules': How Scottish communities should benefit from net zero project rush
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... It is a scheme that has delivered refurbished pubs, improved village halls and supported leisure facilities for communities. But now there is pressure on governments to go further with community benefit funding systems as fast-paced net zero developments bring wider landscape-scale changes to the communities living among them. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Electricity bills do not reflect the relatively cheap cost of energy produced by windfarms like Whitelees, near Eaglesham (Picture: Andrew Milligan) | PA The push to meet respective government targets means onshore wind capacity in Scotland alone will have to double in the next five years, according to industry leaders. The existing and future build-out of energy projects also means major upgrades to the grid network to become 'superhighways' to transport the energy from Scotland to England as part of SSEN Transmission's 'Pathways to 30' project. But what is the benefit to the communities living in amongst these developments? It has been widely recognised that residents across rural parts of Scotland, including the Highlands and Islands, are paying higher bills despite renewable energy developments on their doorstep. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Professor Matthew Hannon | Professor Matthew Hannon Professor Matthew Hannon, director of the Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable Communities (SISC), said: 'At the moment, we are playing a new game with old rules. Typically, back in the day, power stations would be near to where our populations lived - Battersea Power Station, for example. 'But now we have most of the generation capacity in the far north and the communities living there are, per unit of power, paying proportionally more than those who don't live near that power. 'These communities are hosting these facilities and they are seeing their landscape change at pace, but they are not getting cheaper bills.' The UK government is deciding on whether to implement zonal pricing - where electricity is priced differently in various geographic regions in relation to renewable developments - which would mean Scotland could see some of the cheapest bills in Europe. Ministers said a decision is to be made 'in due course'. Industry experts, however, have said the change to the national rate could put renewable energy developments in the pipeline at risk over price uncertainty. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The Scotsman has launched a new series 'The Net Zero Dilemma' | Gavin Munro/Scotsman While jobs are likely to increase in rural areas targeted by energy or electricity developments, with SSEN saying there will be 37,000 positions produced in the work to its 2030 goal, Prof Hannon said a lot of projects, including offshore wind farms, are owned by foreign firms and often contracted out to foreign firms. The industry is also not as labour intensive as previous ones such as coal mining. But the professor said as a country, 'we could be doing more to increase the employment intensity of these net zero projects'. He said where benefits are being felt from renewable energy projects is with community benefit funds (CBFs), which he described as a sector that 'will only grow and grow'. At the moment, CBFs are a voluntary financial package offered by developers of renewable energy projects, such as wind farms, to local communities impacted. The Scottish Government is looking into making them mandatory. There have been multiple projects across Scotland that have benefited from such funding, including New Luce in Dumfries and Galloway, which has seen its local pub, the Kenmuir Arms, refurbished and funding towards staffing the post office. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Prof Hannon said while the input from developers was widespread, with government figures showing more than £30 million was offered in community benefits to Scottish communities in 2024, Scottish Government guidance of giving £5,000 per MW of installed capacity is from 2014 and needs to update with inflation. Where improvements could also be made are with ensuring there is 'capacity and capabilities' in communities 'to effectively govern these monies coming in', he said. 'For some communities, these can be a huge sum of money that have to be managed by volunteers who haven't had training and are juggling other priorities,' Prof Hannon said. 'To expect them to manage this money is a big ask. 'So it's important to bolster that capacity and capability to ensure these funds are spent effectively and wisely.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Prof Hannon said a proportion could be spent on 'hyper local' initiatives, but also have some money to go towards broader systemic issues in the region, such as developing new skills for new industry that renewables projects might bring. He said: 'Imagine all the CBFs in Caithness and Sutherland were put into a regional pot. The size and geographical remit of that pot means they can then tackle bigger thornier issues - education, skills and tourism. It might be about establishing new industries and facilitating innovation. I think that's where it's going. But it's taking a while to get there.' Experts in policy have regularly pointed to net zero developments laying the ground in rural areas for additional electricity intensive demand such as data centres, heavy industry and developments backing up new artificial intelligence infrastructure. Shared ownership Another driver in improving community benefit is the drive for shared ownership - where local communities and commercial developers co-own a renewable energy project - Prof Hannon said. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'This is something being explored, but it's, generally speaking, very rare across the UK and Scotland,' he said. 'I think it is an exciting model as it's about giving the community the means to establish revenue generating assets that create a long-term positive legacy for that community. 'And these assets are either wholly or partially in the hands of the community. That way you're not beholden to a developer saying 'we will give you so much for so long.' 'You take that cash and you invest in something that is yours and you have control over the direction of that and the revenue.' According to a recent report by Regen, an independent centre of energy expertise with a mission to accelerate the transition to a zero carbon energy system, shared ownership 'should be recognised as a national priority'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The Scottish Government said it is reviewing its Good Practice Principles in relation to community benefit and recently consulted the public. A spokesperson said: 'The evidence gathered will inform a refresh of our guidance so that community benefit arrangements deliver sustainable, meaningful impacts and help support our just and fair transition to net zero.' The UK government set out plans for households in the UK living up to 500m from new or significantly upgraded electricity transmission infrastructure to get up to £2,500 off their electricity bills over ten years, with cash boosts for new facilities when they host offshore wind and solar projects.
