Energy Strategy Consultation

Common Weal warmly welcomes publication of this draft energy strategy and its “Whole System View” that includes both short and longer term targets and visions.

We also welcome the Scottish Government’s commitment to honouring climate change targets, showing Scotland is indeed playing a leading and responsible role in the world.

We welcome the quality of public discussion generated by the consultation and we are pleased to take the opportunity to respond to it.

Common Weal fully supports the principles set out in this strategy and agrees with the policy objectives it contains. However we would like to see the intended “Whole System View” adopt a greater degree of integration between energy and industrial development, for example, the creation of demand by energy-intensive users closer to production in northern Scotland. Finding ways to achieve this would reduce the need for the further investment in costly transmission infrastructure that will further drive up the cost of grid connections.

Transformation of the energy system is essential if Scotland is to meet its environmental objectives, so this draft energy strategy is to be commended in addressing the need to look beyond renewable electricity production and towards decarbonisation of transport and heating. In adopting an all-energy approach to strategy development, we believe the Scottish Government is following a path that is most likely to deliver the desired outcomes.  In particular, we support an approach that avoids mandating a particular technology mix for energy production, as the strategy has a significant dependency on solutions that are not yet proven at scale. However this was also true of wind generation 15 or 20 years ago and there is no reason to suppose that new energy technologies will not similarly benefit from a supportive energy policy environment.

Common Weal is concerned that the UK Government has placed obstacles in the path of the Scottish Government achieving its carbon free objectives. These range from:

• The privatisation of the energy market in the 1980s which resulted for a long time in a lack of investment in grid infrastructure; • The fact that Energy Policy is a reserved power under the devolution settlement; • The short-sighted changes in energy policy and subsidies;

• The ban on on-shore wind development in England;

• The decision to proceed with the ludicrously expensive Hinkley Point C and other nuclear reactors;

• The lack of flexibility in the charging regime for grid connections which inhibit new Scottish generation in favour of the South of England.

Common Weal believes that these and more of the potential conflicts with the UK Government should be delineated in the strategy so as to make the case for full devolution of energy policy and or Scottish Independence. Indeed we have concerns that unless this is addressed, the ambitious goals set out cannot be achieved.

Nevertheless, Common Weal welcomes the priorities set out in the paper in particular the desire to transform the energy system to one based on carbon free energy and to encourage research and deployment of new sources of energy.

We strongly support the establishment of a Scottish Energy Company which can support local energy cooperatives and smaller public energy companies and provide a level playing field for energy pricing and investment. This should be backed by Energy Bonds and a public investment bank. Indeed if the model for the public energy company was the Danish Energy Agency, which administers energy and supply in Denmark, many of the problems associated with a privatised energy market could be addressed.

Energy is essential for social existence and Scotland is fortunate to have abundant natural resources of wind, wave, tidal, solar, hydro and geothermal to produce this carbon free energy. The challenge is to make it available to all whilst ensuring jobs, social inclusion and democratic control.

Q1 What are your views on the priorities presented in this chapter for energy supply over the coming decades? In answering, please consider whether the priorities are the right ones for delivering our vision. Common Weal wishes to make the following points as regards the priorities listed before addressing other priorities of a more general nature.

Common Weal:

• Recognises the huge economic contribution North Sea Oil and Gas have made to the Scottish economy;

• Urges the Scottish Government to add a “just and fair transition” of jobs to the low carbon economy as a priority, and to seek alternative sectors using the skills base and domestic supply chains we have. Alternative sectors are likely to include offshore renewable generation and on-land infrastructure (e.g. district heating, for which we currently import the pipework) as well as decommissioning mature oil wells;

• Has concerns regards the primacy given to the development and commercialisation of CCS, and has questions regards its technical feasibility and cost effectiveness and the implication that fossil fuel plants could be retained longer than necessary. Nevertheless we welcome the EU funding of the Acorn project to test the feasibility of CCS at Peterhead; 

• Support, in principle, exploration of new non-fossil fuel energy sources, provided they come with safeguards of environmental protection, take cognisance of public opinion, especially of communities affected (both local and communities of interest), and a fair settlement is agreed with local communities.

• Has a specific concern about unconventional oil and gas which includes not only environmental matters and strong public opposition, but the licensing arrangements: that licenses are currently sold by Crown Estates, with no input at a local or Scottish level other than within the Planning process.

• Strongly supports exploration of alternative energy carriers, such as hydrogen;

• Supports the priority of increasing renewable generation; • Views that the fifth priority, “increasing the flexibility, efficiency and resilience of a future energy system”, as fundamentally essential to underpin whatever future energy system we will have. This matter is complex and merits far greater discussion and we have addressed it at greater length below;

• Sees Scotland as a potential net energy exporter, but would prioritise meeting Scotland’s own energy and economic needs over large-scale exports. Common Weal wishes to make the following observations about more general priorities.

Integration of Industrial Strategy

The consultation recognises the importance of ensuring security of supply and this would be our overriding priority in the process of delivering the level of transformational change to Scotland’s energy system that this consultation envisages. However, we believe that the value of such an ambitious strategy would be enhanced by a greater emphasis on how a comprehensive energy policy can be used to support wider economic objectives.

Common Weal’s vision for future would include locating energy-intensive industries that can utilise energy with variable output, close to generation sites; allowing supply by direct line from the generator, avoiding the need for a gridconnection, or for a carrier fuel.

So we believe that exploitation of energy resources, of all kinds, should be managed in the context of an industrial policy that seeks to develop energy-intensive industries, such as ammonia/hydrogen production, in a way that avoids incurring Transmission Charges wherever possible. Currently these frequently make the difference between a proposed scheme being viable and not.

This industrialisation strategy is one that has been pursued by Iceland; developing aluminium production and renewable energy resources in tandem. While there are significant differences between a dispatchable, geothermal/hydro-based system and the variable output/distributed generation system in Scotland/GB, the overarching principal of exploiting resource availability to leverage economic development should be the same. Whilst heat generation and storage can take up some of load as per Iceland, the only differences being the likely need for a carrier fuel/ substantive storage in Scotland, to redistribute energy over time.