6 days ago
Zonal pricing snub shows Scottish Labour won't stand up for Scotland
As tumbleweed rolls down Aberdeen's Union Street and redundancies are the only thing growing in the north-east, he shuts downwatched the shutting down of the Grangemouth refinery. The justification for his decision on zonal energy pricing announced by Scotland Office Minister Michael Shanks was as craven as you'd expect from his lackey.
Heaven forbid that prices might be slightly higher in the golden south of England when people in Scotland are well used to having to pay more in far harsher climes. And Scottish Labour have shown there's no policy or consequence too unpalatable to swallow if their London masters command.
Zonal pricing has been championed not by pensioners in the far north but by the chief executive of one of the UK's major energy suppliers.
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While 'Jock' voices could be treated with the usual contempt and given the same cold shoulder that pleas on the Winter Fuel Payement received, Greg Jackson is an altogether different case – a hugely successful entrepreneur who has built up Octopus Energy, and has even been awarded a CBE on his journey. His calls deserved a critical analysis, not a perfunctory rejection.
Scotland has been given a second great natural bounty. The real spoils of the first – oil and gas – have passed us by and we can only look with envy at Norway and what might have been. It's still got life in it, though, and Miliband's killing of it is disgraceful. But renewables are at an early stage and although mistakes have been made, huge opportunities remain.
Scotland now produces more energy than it requires, and the gap between home requirement and total production is only going to grow and exponentially so.
But what's in it for us? Where's the benefit for Scotland and the Scots? Returns are paltry, with pennies for local communities blighted by onshore wind farms and the thousands paid to the Crown Estate for crossing its foreshore nothing akin to the funds which should be streaming ashore, along with the power produced.
UK Energy Secretary Ed MilibandCheap energy is essential and critical for our society and economy. Folk are literally freezing in their homes in winter, as Miliband and Shanks know, while they see the turbines turning off their shores and on their hills. Our economy should be booming. Businesses currently struggling should be benefitting and new ones choosing to locate here.
As things stand, Scots hoteliers struggle to compete with continental competition which is so much cheaper because of climate but also, as with the Republic of Ireland, with energy pricing. Why have a golf sojourn in Scotland – the home of golf – when you can visit the Emerald Isle and get far more bang for your buck? That applies in every sector of business from tourism through to modern technology.
Similarly, why would you locate a new start-up here in whatever sector, but especially one that is energy intensive, when you could do so where it's cheaper and sunnier? But Scotland's role, according to Shanks, is just to grin and bear it, and the auld yins should just wrap up well.
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For just as our oil and gas were critical for the UK economy in decades past, renewables are to be the bedrock for the coming ones. It was Boris Johnson who termed the North Sea, 'the Saudi Arabia of wind'. It sure is – but while the desert was transformed by the Saudis with their new-found wealth, Scotland is to be deserted and once again be denied the fruits of its natural bounty.
Scotland is simply to be a resource to be exploited. Its renewable energy is taken for a song, with little business and few jobs following, and many that do simply being maintenance, with the far higher-value and higher-skilled work done elsewhere. Compounding that agony, Meanwhile, higher costs and their effect for citizens and businesses in a colder climate remain.
But the UK current and past regimes has worse planned. Scotland is not to get the revenue from this global resource and believe me, it is a world game-changer.
Whether cabling through to Europe, and Germany in particular, or making green hydrogen for export, this has the potential for Scotland to be at the centre of a new world economy. Instead, Scotland has its environment trashed by pylons taking the energy south of the Border, with endless onshore wind farms to produce it and battery storage to house it.
Perish the thought that they should build these huge super containers in metropolitan England where the power will be used. Colonel Blimp would choke on his G&T. I'm reminded of the Irish Republican song about Britain's claim for Rockall:
Oh, the Empire it is finished
No foreign lands to seize
So, the greedy eyes of England
Is stirring towards the seas.
It's Scotland's onshore and offshore bounty, and our land and people must benefit from it. Zonal pricing has issues and challenges, but they can be overcome. It's why independence is essential.
Energy-rich Scotland should see a vibrant society and booming economy, not unaffordable energy costs and a blighted landscape.
