Renewable energy sector facing huge blow
RENEWABLE energy is one of Scotland’s key strengths.
We are the blowiest country in Europe with a quarter of the entire continent’s on and offshore wind “resource”. We also have a quarter of Europe’s tidal energy potential and 10 per cent of its wave energy.
This has already created thousands of good jobs in engineering, construction and manufacturing. After the energy parks are built, they need technicians and I know quite a few who make a good living monitoring and repairing the turbines.
Why, then, do industry body Scottish Renewables say one in six jobs in the sector here could be cut? The wind has not stopped blowing. Energy is a policy reserved completely to the UK Government.
They have cut incentives to renewables and, as a result, a poll of the companies in the sector found they expect to shed almost 17 per cent of posts in Scotland in the next year.
The UK Government move is an act of environmental and industrial vandalism.
Support for Scotland’s clean energy firms is being cut as the UK Government plan to invest billions in the Hinckley C nuclear plant in Somerset. The UK Government will pay £92.50 per megawatt hour for energy from the power plant when it is finally built – more than twice the current wholesale price. The cost of Scottish wind is about half of that.
Scottish renewables are a massive success story. Wind energy alone met almost two-thirds of our electricity needs last month. We are on target to reach 100 per cent. None of this makes any sense. The Tory Government talk about an industrial strategy for the UK, meanwhile they try to wreck one of Scotland’s key industries.
That’s spite for you.