Joan McAlpine We need wind of change to engineer our future
IT GLIDED through the water off Peterhead like a massive mechanical swan. The towering turbine of the world’s first floating wind farm, which is taller than Big Ben.
I WROTE sympathetically about Charlie Gard’s mum and dad recently.
I said that while doctors had Charlie’s interests at heart, it did not seem right they should legally overrule loving parents and block experimental treatment that would not have cost the NHS money or time.
As Charlie’s mum said yesterday in her moving statement, she would never have subjected her baby to treatment that caused him suffering.
But his parents could not have loved him more. They should be left to say goodbye to their beautiful boy.
A couple of juggernauts could fit in the “engine box” behind the blades. It is a miracle of mechanical engineering, a gleaming symbol of a new industrial revolution off our shores
The giant windmill – and its four siblings in the Hywind project – will generate clean energy right here in Scotland, which has a quarter of Europe’s offshore wind power potential.
It may be the first of many, as offshore wind blows harder than the landlubber variety.
That’s something of which we can all be proud. It will generate jobs as well as electricity.
But sadly, we did not manufacture these amazing edifices.
The giant turbines were built not in the deep sea lochs of Scotland but in the fjords of neighbouring Norway.
The spectacular pictures of the first manoeuvre were taken in the light of a cold Norwegian dawn as the tower was towed to across the sea to Scotland.
The company behind the revolutionary wind farm are Statoil, the mainly state-owned Norwegian oil giants. Statoil have operations all around the world – another huge success for the Nordic country with less people than Scotland.
It’s another example of how the Norwegians have built on the oil wealth they and Scotland share in equal measure.
Norway, a small independent country, kept control of its oil wealth, funnelling revenue into a national savings pot now worth £500billion. It also built up Statoil, owned by the people, and now moving into new areas of industry to help provide engineering jobs for future generations.
Statoil are diversifying. They will invest $500million-plus in renewable energy projects every year, including the Scottish floating wind farm, which also plans to store energy through cutting edge battery technology.
They are in an even better position to do that now the oil price is climbing again – as it always would. Statoil reported increased profits of $3.3billion in the first quarter of this year.
Meanwhile, in the southern North Sea, another small independent country has turned a state-owned oil and gas company into a global renewables leader. Dong energy were once the publicly-owned Danish Oil and Natural Gas.
Now they have moved from black to green and are the world’s largest operators of offshore wind.
Back in Scotland, I cannot help but think of former PM David Cameron’s arrogant assertion during the 2014 referendum that Scotland needed “the broad shoulders of the UK” to manage its oil wealth effectively.
Contrast with Norway and Denmark. Scotland has no comparable national savings pot to show from oil – the UK Treasury spent it all. We have no state energy company powering a big green energy bang on the scale of Statoil.
Don’t get me wrong. Green energy is powering thousands of Scottish jobs. The SNP have set ambitious targets and work closely with the sector to encourage investment.
That means hundreds of jobs in Nigg, for example. A £27million investment in Campbeltown by Siemens will treble the output of their factory manufacturing turbines.
All across Scotland, there are other examples. But we face obstacles. Support from London has been slashed and now Brexit further threatens investment.
As long as energy policy is controlled by Westminster, Scotland has to push against the prevailing wind to capitalise on its natural resources.