Scotland the green

Weekend West
16 July 2011, Page: 60

As Australia grapples with a contentious carbon tax to tackle climate change, Scotland is aiming to I become Europe's green energy powerhouse. The Scots' ambitions are centred on a group of tiny Islands off the mainland. The wild and rugged Orkney Islands, where the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean collide, has become a test bed for the latest wave and tidal power technologies. Nowhere in the world conducts more research into marine energy than Scotland, whose countrymen invented the telephone, industrial steam engine and television.

Scotland's nationalist Government aims to harness that talent for innovation to the country's natural resources to lead the way on wave and tidal energy, just as Saudi Arabia has with global oil production. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond says the work done by the research organisation European Marine Energy Centre will help unlock $9 billion of investment from the likes of Germany's biggest power utility E.ON, Scottish Power, part of Spain's Iberdola, the world's biggest renewable energy producer and investment bankers Morgan Stanley.

Mr Salmond says all Scotland's electricity will come from renewable sources by 2020. "We're not trying to put the first Scot on the moon, this is doable", European Marine Energy Centre head Neil Ker mode said. "There aren't many energy revolutions that come around in anybody's lifetime, but this is one". The seas around Scotland have the potential to provide up to 25% of Europe's tidal power and 10% of its wave energy, according to Scottish Development International, the government body charged with fostering investment.

But not everyone is a believer. Politicians from British Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party which trails in third as a political force in Scotland, industry executives and academics say Mr Salmond's vow to secure Scotland as a global hub of renewable energy is reaching too far. "The question is whether it is affordable and realistic", Gordon Walkden, a professor of geosciences at the University of Aberdeen, the hub of the North Sea oil industry, said. "Would our budget allow us to throw unlimited money at it like the Americans did when they decided to put a man on the moon? It's not a dissimilar challenge".

To achieve the green energy target, Mr Salmond is challenging Mr Cameron's Government to cede the rights to the seabed. At present, every company developing marine energy projects must pay rent to the Crown Estate, the body that has administered the monarchy's assets in Scotland since 1832. All revenue $20 million from Scotland in the year ended March 31, 2010 goes to the British Treasury in London. Mr Salmond, whose Scottish National Party won a second term in May 5 elections, wants that money to stay in Scotland.

The Orkneys, population 20,000, comprise about 70 Islands, 19 of which are inhabited, with most people living in the towns of Kirkwall and Stromness on the biggest island, known locally as the "mainland". The testing for an energy bonanza based on marine energy isn't apparent to visitors, with testing taking place under the sea and most of the boats moving about being traditional fishing vessels. Most of Orkney is undulating green fields and the main industries are beef farming, crab fishing and cheese making. For the nascent marine energy industry, the area has two main selling points, say Mr Kermode and Stephen Hagan, head of the Orkney Islands council.

First, it is the most northerly point of Britain's national grid, allowing the electricity generated from the sea to enter the power market without the need for costly cables to be laid. It also has a 130km² natural harbour called Scapa Flow, where the Germans scuttled their World War I naval fleet. A base for the Royal Navy, it was sealed off with barriers built at the behest of Winston Churchill in 1940 after Germany sank another warship, this time a British one. On one side of the barrier the sea is choppy, evidence of the potential of the waters. On the other, it's calm, allowing the industry to build infrastructure to house its equipment.

"You can't underestimate the importance of Scapa Flow, it's the jewel in our crown", says Mr Hagan, 57, a Northern Irishman who moved to Orkney 25 years ago to run his wife's family farm. "There's always been the feeling in Orkney that marine renewables is the big opportunity, but when that would happen we didn't really know", he says. Mr Salmond's Scottish Nationalist Party believes that wresting control of the Crown Estate's assets in Scotland is the key to realising this dream.

The Edinburgh legislature, re established in 1999 after a hiatus of three centuries, has power over policy areas such as education, health and justice. Foreign and defence policy plus broader economic and energy matters are reserved for Westminster in London. Mr Salmond, 56, said in an interview while campaigning in March that his Government planned to "engineer the 21st century" using wind and waves, and the green energy industry would create 130,000 jobs. His target for 2020 is to generate twice as much electricity as Scotland needs.

So far, Scotland derives about 30% of its electricity from renewable sources such as wind, hydropower, marine, biomass and energy from waste. Scotland seeks to increase that to 100% by 2020. In Germany the target is 35%, where Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered her Government to speed up the exit from nuclear power after the tsunami caused disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan. The Scottish Government, unlike Westminster, is also anti nuclear.

Scotland may generate all its electricity needs from renewable sources in nine years, though the bulk of it will come from wind rather than waves, Mr Kermode, 52, says. Marine energy is at least four years away from producing power on an industrial scale and the European Marine Energy Centre puts the cost of taking a project from the drawing board to the sea at about $60 million. "That bit of alchemy of turning sea water into electricity has been done", Mr Kermode says. "Now what we've got to do is to industrialise it and do it reliably, at the right quality and down to the right price. The lead is there, it's ours to lose".