12 hours ago
Ignore Reform UK's anti-net zero agenda if you want Scotland to thrive
The logic of what we call net zero is now challenged regularly and one political party is even determined to scrap it. That would, of course, be strategically inept, both economically and environmentally, but I'm worried it's a view that's gaining momentum.
Yes, I'm well aware that Scotland's greenhouse gas contribution to global climate change is miniscule and that if we achieved net zero tomorrow it would make little or no difference to global warming. But that really isn't the point.
Achieving net zero is a worthy goal for an enlightened country such as Scotland but, more importantly, it's a huge economic and industrial opportunity.
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Yes, I also know we've been saying that for probably 20 years or more now and that the reality is that we've managed to achieve relatively little particularly in terms of exportable renewables technology manufacturing. Lots of talk about potential but little action.
The great plan to reindustrialise Scotland on the back of renewables was frankly never going to happen in any meaningful way while we remain under the malign influence of the UK's economic and political ideology and its built-in aversion to investment in manufacturing.
Anyway, that's a subject for another day. The real problems with net zero and the just transition are those directly affecting consumers, both domestic and industrial, as well as society generally.
And the biggest of these is the impact on the cost of living. Energy prices across the UK are considerably higher than in Europe and that's making life extremely difficult for everyone.
Why that's the case is not simply due to the development of renewables as some would have us believe but a messy combination of issues related to the energy mix, how the market operates, infrastructure problems, some poorly thought through policy decisions and privatisation, which necessitated much of this.
Instead of basing the electricity price on an average of all its energy sources the UK foolishly adopted a 'marginal pricing' system, where the highest cost generator needed to meet demand sets the price for all electricity.
That is very often natural gas, the price of which is easily impacted by events outside the UK – for example, the war in Ukraine and the fact Israel has just bombed one of the world's biggest gas fields in Iran.
Gas also accounts for a large proportion of home heating and perhaps as high as 75-80% of people still use it. No great surprise really because it suits the majority of our housing stock, which suffers from much higher levels of heat loss than those in Europe and particularly Scandinavia.
We also have limited gas storage now due to commercial decisions related to financial viability so can't buy it in when it's cheap for use when demand is high. A nationalised industry would have been able to take a different approach.
Critically, consumers also have to pick up the tab for policy costs which will include environmental taxes and renewable energy subsidies. In Europe, some states pick up these costs rather than the consumer.
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Rather like the English water industry, the privatisation of energy has also led to weak regulation and made it more difficult for government to influence the market without it backfiring.
Remember in France in 2022 the government told the majority state-owned company EDF to restrict price increases to 4% in order to protect consumers. Here, no such restrictions were able to be imposed and were unlikely anyway because the presumption here is the protection of shareholders not consumers.
But the fact remains that without gas there is currently no mechanism for backing up a 100% renewables-dependent energy system which by its very nature suffers from being vulnerable to periods of low or even zero generation due to the lack of wind or solar energy or what the Germans call 'Dunkelflaute'. The UK Government's partial answer to the 'marginal cost' problem is to build more nuclear power stations.
At a time when Westminster is insisting it has to prepare the UK for war, this strikes me as a quite bizarre idea. Nuclear power stations make great targets. You don't even have to hit the reactors, just the substations, switchgear and pylons that sit next to it.
That apart, nuclear power station building is renowned for not sticking to a budget or being completed on schedule. Sizewell C is reportedly already some £25 billion over budget and five years late.
The Sizewell C construction site in January (Image: Mike Page) As its costs increase then so will the cost of electricity it generates and, if as expected, it exceeds the cost of electricity from wind or solar will it then become the marker for the 'marginal cost' figure used to calculate electricity prices instead of gas?
A reminder also that the battery storage systems you see popping up now all over Scotland are not aimed at providing energy security and resilience for consumers but at ensuring grid stability. So when it's claimed that this battery system is enough to power 10,000 homes it's simply a means of comparison.
In any event, most of those systems couldn't possibly power those houses for more than a few hours at best. Pointless when some storms have knocked out power supplies for a week or more.
Add in the huge numbers of pylons we're being asked to accept, the cost and disruption of fitting that heat pump – if you can afford it – and the insistence that you must at some point buy a battery electric vehicle whether you want one or not and it's easy to see why people are miffed and why some politicians are feeding on that discontent.
Government needs to slow down, listen to the people and have a rethink because things are getting out of control. Nobody would resent a pause in the process and for example, a reassessment of the role of the oil and gas industry. And that pause wouldn't make a blind bit of difference because as I said, our impact on climate change is almost imperceptible.
