‘Scotland’s Texas’ switches to green after oil bust
Town’s workers took a savage hit as jobs went, but area is rife with renewable opportunity
This northeastern coastal city was a sleepy college town and fishing port until the 1960s, when the discovery of oil in the North Sea triggered an economic boom that earned it the nickname “Scotland’s Texas.”
A crash in global oil prices sent the economy into a tailspin, forcing the city of 200,000 to transform itself into a powerhouse for green energy to fight climate change and revive its once booming economy.
“The installation, operation and maintenance of wind is an obvious crossover,” said Morag McCorkindale, chief operating officer of the Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group, a consortium of businesses assembled by the city government.
“Some form of long-term decline is seen as inevitable,” he said. “We looked at several different diversification opportunities, but the one that took off was the renewables.”
One potential beneficiary of the new emphasis is Guy Ingerson, 30, who lost his job as a buyer in the oil industry two years ago. He moved back in with his mother and works retail jobs while campaigning for investment in the renewable energy sector.
“2016 in particular was hard for us,” Ingerson said. “You’ve seen people losing their homes, people having to use food banks and a large amount of people being put in temporary accommodations. People don’t have the money to buy things.”
That bleak picture is familiar to Michelle Matthew, 43, a former oil rig recruiter who lost her job last year and helps feed the needy at CFINE, a food bank on the city docks where oil supply vessels moor.
“There are people I’ve spoken to who have worked in the industry, manual laborers who lost their job and struggled to get work, especially older folk,” Matthew said. “It gets difficult for them to get back into careers.”
The oil crisis hit in mid-2014, when oil prices fell by half and have since hovered around $50 a barrel. Matthew’s food bank has limited people to biweekly visits to manage demand.
Unemployment in the city increased 25% during the slump and hit 5.4% in 2016, according to government data. That was about a percentage point higher than the national average.
Luckily for the beleaguered community, the combination of high hills, local skills and strong winds make this corner of Scotland bursting with lucrative opportunities for renewable energy. Scotland has about a quarter of the European Union’s potential for wind power, according to the Scottish regional government.
Businesses find ways to turn oil industry equipment into new uses for renewable energy. “The wind turbines now use a jacket structure developed from oil rigs, for example,” McCorkindale said.
The innovations in Aberdeen could help other countries develop clean energy, she said. “We’re driven by environmental and economic concerns, but we are also developing technology that could help nations out there who are just desperate for power,” she said. “People are coming from all over the world to see what we are doing.”
Two miles north of Aberdeen’s downtown, at the tiny fishing station of Blackdog, Swedish energy company Vattenfall is building the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre to test deep-sea oil rig technology in the choppy Scottish waters. The project is slated to become one of the largest wind farms in the world.
“As Europe’s energy capital, Aberdeen is already well-positioned to transfer more than 40 years of world-class oil and gas expertise into renewable energy — particularly offshore renewables” said Adam Ezzamel, who oversees the project.
For young people, a shift away from alternating cycles of boom and bust cannot come quick enough. Niall Ford, 21, plays music around the city and serves cof- fee at a youth cafe. It is one of the few businesses doing well in a city center full of empty properties amid glistening granite buildings and grand Victorian streets.
“When you walk around town and see all these places closed down, it is nice to know there is still somewhere you can go and hang out.” Ford said. “A lot of people my age looking for more specialized jobs will tend to head out of the city. That seems to be changing. If there is going to be this ebb and flow, we need some momentum to get things happening.”