Bishop Hill Sturgeon cries for help
Feb 17, 2015 Energy: grid Having gone hell for leather to make wind power the centrepiece of Scottish energy policy, having fought tooth and nail to prevent new nuclear and coal-fired capacity and at best only lukewarm on gas, the Scottish National Party are now having to face the consequences of what they have done. It looks like a case of a cry for help:
Firstly, we have demands that Westminster do something about the perilous security of Scotland's electricity supply:
The First Minister has written to David Cameron urging the UK Government to review the security of Scotland's electricity supply.
Nicola Sturgeon said UK energy policy was compromising energy security north of the border and called on the Prime Minister to act.
And then, having made quite sure that an onshore oil and gas industry will not develop north of the border, it is now crying out for tax breaks for the ailing North Sea:
THE UK Government can no longer ignore calls for urgent tax changes that could spark a “resurgence” in the North Sea oil industry, Nicola Sturgeon has said.
Scotland’s First Minister claimed it was clear that “urgent fiscal stimulus” was needed to increase exploration work.
Make no mistake. Sturgeon is not a fool and neither was Alex Salmond before her. Their pursuit of wind power and their wrecking of conventional power generation north of the border was motivated by the desire to win green votes. This is the problem with having politicians in control of anything - you always run the risk of the dumb leading the blind to policy chaos.
Reader Comments (61)
I was pleading with everyone to give the scots their independence. What a missed opportunity that was.
typo: ' it is not crying out' > 'it is now crying out'
[Thanks.BH]
The SNP are owned by Murdoch like everyone else.
What's needed now are phase switches at the border to crash the Scots' Grid when ours is overloaded by their excess wind power. That wind energy is owned by the 200 or so businessmen behind the SNP's Corporatist Fascism disguised as Green Politics. The aim was to screw the English by selling wind power at double Grid Price, then importing fossil and nuclear power at 1x Grid Price.
It looks like it cld be a re-run of the poll tax experiment, only this time it has been foisted on Scotland by the Scottish politicians. What we are now seeing is what lays in the pipeline for England/Wales if we continue with this crazy energy policy. If there is a silver lining the voters in England/Wales will get to see, in advance, the outcome of the energy policies forced onto the UK by the environmental movement and taken up enthusiastically by the SNP. Then they can judge for themselves.
I see the dimwit SNP politicians have helped produce Scotland's perfect storm
Wind power - useless, unreliable and expensive
Oil - once Scotland's saviour, suffering heavily due to the price crunch - job losses mount
Shale gas - idiotic moratorium to pander to Putin's green pawns which will set back the petro-industry years
What a shambles! Only the SNP pandering rather than thinking, could have made such a mess!
Stephen Richards
There's no call to be a bigot. It was not in your power to "give" the Scots anything, the union is a mutually agreed political settlement, and as such one side had no power or otherwise to "give" anything. The people were asked and they rejected it, so no more of your petty English nationalism, it's nastiness like that that drives separatism.
Secondly, having rejected it, do you think it's fair that the people of Scotland have this blight foisted upon them by politicians? it's no different from how the rest of the UK gets "green solutions" foist on them without their permission. If anything you should show some sympathy, and take a modicum of pleasure that green energy decisions are being shown to be uneconomic, not using it to drum your soap-box.
The SNP did not want independence for Scotland. It was made plain multiple times by Alex Salmond that they wanted to be subsumed into the EU and the Eurozone. This can only be to improve the 'career prospects' of the SNP politicians and not for the good of Scotland. As any Greek would have told them being a relatively poor country in the Eurozone puts your entire economy and often politicians under the control of the European Commission and Central Bank. The Scot's two main economic assets are oil which is running out thanks to bans on onshore drilling and tourism being driven away by windmills which they are putting up in all the previously 'unspoilt' areas of the Highlands and coastlines. Being in the EU would have become a very painful experience extremely rapidly with instructions from Brussels to impose significant 'austerity' cuts in government spending such as reducing the civil service and stopping free university courses and free old people's homes. Of course they would still have had the energy problems and they would have been unable to lower the tax on the oil companies as that would have been their sole source of reliable income. Any support for the SNP must be an emotional rejection of Conservative and Labour; it certainly is not logical.
But .... but ..... I seem to recall Friends of the Earth Scotland recently released two Press Releases in a fanfare of publicity proclaiming that Scottish Wind provided >100% of Scottish domestic power needs, (on at least one day in a month). The PR puffs weren't even for consecutive months.
It looks to us as if there is some serious sabre-rattling going on. No coincidence that Vince Cable is in Edinburgh talking about England helping to keep Scotland's lights on. The SG hoist by its own energy petard!
Sounds like more windmills required. Please send more money and quit blocking build permissions.
Thats it?
The SNP are not so much a party as a disjointed coaltion between groups I describe as:
1. Glorious Gale - a romantic group of people who believe they are in some way the heirs of a pagan "celtic" kingdom full of red haired people drinking whisky and wearing kilts. In fact, history does not record any celts in Britain let alone Scotland, whisky is Irish and the kilt is not more scottish than are the birdmincers on our hills.
2. The Tartan Tory - typically public school or well educated, they would prefer to vote Tory.
3. The Green=Naive wing - who joined the party to fight nuclear weapons before the Greens had any hope of power and would still be part of a party in power.
The central issue is the potential closure of the massive coal burning Longannet power station. This closure would be in line with the recently announced coalition against coal of Cameron, Clegg and Milliband. The hugely negative impact on UK (not just Scotland) generating capacity would be a problem for all of us. Nicola Sturgeon is championing the continuing generation of electricity by burning coal and so her intervention is to be welcomed. This may well be an indication that a bit of realism is entering the fantasy world of UK power generation.
Funny how when it's going tits up then it's 'UK energy policy' that's compromising Scotland, rather than a Scottish energy policy which she helped create. Meanwhile if the roles were reversed you can safely bet she'd
a) put Scotland's needs first and b) hike up the price of any energy sold to the fools south of the border.
Sturgeon is a political parasite; she uses when it suits her and offers little in return when it doesn't. She also deserves all the discomfort this little difficulty brings, with the only mitigation being the entire UK government is up to it's neck in climate / energy stupidity regardless of party preference. What an Omni-shambles.
David Cameron could make statements about this approach from Sturgeon, and via the "media", seek informal advice from the people of Scotland, whether they would be happy to rely on unreliable renewables, to keep the lights on, rely on the rest of the UK's uncertain energy policy, or adopt a more flexible approach to reliable unconventionals, such as fracking.
Any sensible Scot, whatever their political leaning, would probably opt for keeping the lights on, as reliably as possible.
The remaining Scots will be damned by their own dogma, whatever the outcome.
The Scots could be seen to lead the UK, and Europe, by example. As an Englishman, that would enhance my pride of Scotland. However nationalism in Scotland might be fearful of that, and label my pride as jealousy. They would be partially correct,of course.
North Sea and Atlantic Ocean to be renamed shortly:
Scotch Sea
Scotch Ocean
They'll still need the money though....oh EU. Am surprised that they are not after back taxes and interest from all the early years of non Scotch Sea Oil and gas. /Sarc
geronimo
It looks like it cld be a re-run of the poll tax experiment, only this time it has been foisted on Scotland by the Scottish politicians.
If you are familiar with the devolution settlement you will notice something very odd. Everything in the previous Scotland department was devolved pretty much "as is" ... except one rather odd change. The Scottish parliament was given the power to produce renewable energy - but otherwise it had no power over the electricity grid or any other energy.
And it is very clear to me why this occurred. The English politicians knew that if the Westminster government were to order the Scots to tear up vast swathes of Scotland to put up the windmills the Westminster government needed to fulfil its own commitment to renewables ... then there would be a massive backlash by the people of Scotland against this Westminster imposed policy.
So, Westminster did something very simple - they gave the Scottish parliament almost no real powers except that over renewable targets. And like boys with new toys - it was inevitable that the Scottish political leaders wanting to look like statesmen would want to "play with" this new toy - show that they had real power ... and as they couldn't cut the target, all they were ever going to do is to "show their independence" by doing exactly what Westminster wanted and going full steam for renewables (& it helped that the SNP had a massive green lobby).
However, there was one flaw in this policy -- Scotland already produced around 8% of its electricity from renewables in the form of Hydro. So, skillfully, the Westminster government redefined Hydro as not being a form of renewables so that the idiotic Scottish politicians would have to show their political virility (aka stupidity) by producing far more than they needed from wind.
So, basically every single on of us in Scotland is paying hundreds of pounds in additional taxes because our Scottish politicians do not count our Hydro as renewables. And as a result, we in the coldest part of Britain, pay far more on our bills than we should, have far more birdmincers on our hills than is equitable and end up having our tourist industry destroyed far more than we should.
And so Scotland was taken to the cleaners, not only by the English establishment, but also by our own numpty nationalists.
SO NOW ENGLAND CAN FULFIL ITS INTERNATIONAL OBLIGATIONS THROUGH THE STUPIDITY OF THE SCOTS.
SNP = Shambles? No Problem.
After the statement by Clegg Cameron Milliband last week it looks like the whole UK will be in a similar situation within the term of the next parliament. I think gloating by anyone is short sighted hubris. Even France seems to be following the lunacy.
The pursuit of green votes is understandable, if ill advised when there is no real problem.
But I would like to see current politicians, North and South, write in their memoirs why they thought an intermittent and unreliable source of electricity generation would be anything other than a bad idea to implement on a large scale. They know as consumers they would not accept it.
yip the SNP are unashamedly populist...and damn us all with their choices...
Surely by now you must all know that it has nothing to do with environment, it is to do with control by energy and money. The communists of the E.U. have all their Dachau's in place and their private jets and police state controls and their bought willing fools in the green blob and the paid for political power in all the satellite states. Welcome to 1984 George Orwell would not be surprised.
MikeHaseler, the SNP support has recently been swelled by those disaffected by the Labour attitude during the independance vote, and more significantly by the acrimonious fallout since.
Tories had pretty well given up on Westminster seats north of the border, and Labour relied on it. At the coming election, the tories have much to gain, not from extra MP's, but reduced Labour MP's.
Sturgeon is quick to point Scotland's woes at the UK Government, rather than the green luvvies. So demonstrating a counterattacking, dodge and swerve much needed by the Scotland rugby team.
Financially, it all makes good sense for the SNP. An Independent Scotland requires an income source, to replace the net transfers from England. Back in the 1980s, it could have been provided by oil. Now it could be provided by wind turbines, provided the huge subsidies for renewables are maintained; the rest of the UK provides fossil fuel power when the winds do not blow; and, post Independance, Scotland remains as part of the UK for energy policy.
Meanwhile the destruction of areas of wilderness in Scotland continues, see this post by Alan Sloman.
TBYJ
You are out of order here. I'm 62 yo, born in Australia and grew up in England. I used to consider myself British. In my late teens I was very surprised to travel to Scotland and see ambulances "Scottish Ambulance". WTF? There weren't any "English Ambulance" where I lived. Later, driving trucks, overnighting in Scotland (or Wales) I'd be snubbed in the pub trying to order a pint.
Scots and Welsh have been playing the revanchist card since I turned adult. It's due to Scots and Welsh revanchists that people who used to consider themselves British now consider themselves English. Salmond made a strategic error excluding the English from the devolution vote.
The Beeb are still spinning it the other way, according to their politburo Scotland has so much surplus electricity that the problem is that England can't take enough of the surplus through the only cable that crosses the border.
The subsidies are not going to Scotland, Kevin. They are being paid to huge multinational corporations in Germany, Korea, China etc. This is why talk of turbines and their ilk being investments is complete bollocks. Scotland is being mightily screwed as usual and even their own rulers join the attack by refusing to drill for shale gas. No wonder the Scottish Rugby team can't get the ball over the line, failure is endemic in Scotland.
At least Sturgeon has noticed. How long before Dave Snooty and Mr Milibean do..?
Don't know why she's worrying - a massive wind farm has just been approved in the Shetlands (with a capacity about five times that of Shetland Islands demand) - so LOTS to export to mainland Scotland...
Not missing anything, am I..?
Mikky, in which case what is Sturgeon worried about?
Couldn't be jobs, reliable power, income etc, they are not green luvverable concepts.
Aren't sturgeons bottom feeders?
2 years ago the SNP made this prediction for now.. Have the achieved it ? 50% from renewables ?
SNP has been in government all the time so should have achieved its targetPS don't forget Wales, what happened to Dragon Wave .. not run off with the subsidy money have they ?
( in Pembrokeshire ..no updates since 2011)
Hector
The problem is that the Scottish Government has power without responsibility. Power to consent increasingly useless wind capacity (Section 36 applications and appeals), even if it can't be connected to the grid for years and is overloading the grid in areas where wind power is routinely curtailed (yet still paid for by the UK consumer).
But they shrug off responsibility for costs and increasingly insecure and unstable power supplies.
These, of course are all the fault of the evil English Government.
Meanwhile they are not above entirely misrepresenting the facts on renewables, especially in terms of costs and employment, and telling downright porkies about the risks of fracking.
Andrew
You should perhaps have made it clear that energy is not a power devolved from Westminster to the Scottish Parliament. Also, is it not a result of an EU Directive that the Climate Change Act 2008 exists? My memory of these matters may be faulty but the Scottish parliament followed the Climate Change Act 2008 with its own Act in 2009. Was the Scottish 2009 Act more "enthusiastic" about the level of renewable energy that could be achieved? Whatever targets were set they would not be simply what the SNP wished them to be. The SNP had no overall majority at that time so would depend on how others voted.
Most people here will agree the SNP have bought the "green agenda". So have all the other main parties in Westminster. You don't need to try to offend the sensibilities of fellow Scots who don't quite follow your political views.
sam
I am sure it is just a coincidence, but I have just remembered that I sent an email on energy policy to my MSPs a few weeks ago (Murdo Fraser & John Swinney). This is how it ended:
Could this message from a lowly lapogus got through to high flying Nicola?
Lapogus
Excellent. Assuming the MSPs (or MPs) you write to are at least prepared to pay attention (and Swinney is a reasonable man) at the very worst you are backing them into a corner where eventually they will be forced to justify their policies, if only to themselves.
The vast majority of public servants, which includes the elected ones, are in it to serve the public and sooner or later will be forced, by their own consciences if for no other reason, to pay attention to what the public want. I wonder if even Sturgeon isn't beginning to realise that losing Longannet and the nukes as they come to the end of their lives is going to leave a massive hole in Scotland's energy needs. Another long and cold winter will really concentrate the mind.
But if the SNP haven't had any power over power except for these windmills then it becomes crystal clear why they are so pro-wind doesn't it? It was the Tories who stupidly privatised our energy supply and then stood idly by while foreigners bought it all up. It was the Tories that ended the nuclear power plan. They even privatised the national grid for gawds sake. I very much doubt that Sturgeon or indeed any ScotNat anywhere was in favour of any of this wanton stupidity. We're now heading down the pan alright but it was the Tories that started this headless march and they were gleefully joined by clueless New Labour. No other political party in the world bar these two could be dumb enough to do a free market experiment with their energy supply.
Scotland's energy minister said the national grid's "assumptions about security of supply seem to be extremely optimistic". Hoorah! someone finally noticed even if LibLabCon hasn't. The fact is that the national grid, being private, can only gain from energy price hikes due to a shortfall and if the foreigners buy that up too then gawdelpus.
lapogus:
I too recently sent a paper to the “powers that be” to explain how misguided their climate and energy policies are. I have tried many times in the past with technical arguments on how useless wind power is, but they have always ignored me, e.g. by quoting “authorities” like RenewablesUK. This time I concentrated on explaining how the IPCC misrepresents the so-called climate science, rendering it unfit for purpose.
I sent it to my local councillors, copy the politicians, hoping to persuade the councillors to stand up against the politicians. Unfortunately the response so far has been a deafening silence, but who knows, maybe it has had some effect, especially my Postscript which reproduces and annotates “fobbing-off” letters sent to me by politicians . See http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/Junk-Science.pdf
@Doug Brodie: the best representations are private; Government was told just over 4 years ago at the highest level that the renewables scam was set up by the EU Mafias, in our case the W. Midlands asset strippers who paid for senior people in the last administration to get the subsidies. It was also explained how IPCC science is the biggest science fraud in History. Green politics is not an issue with the Party leaders because our inner Establishment is now exerting its real power on the real idiots, like Davey, who has been told, forcibly, to get fraccing.
Doug - yes my previous attempts to enlighten Swinney et al have also fallen on deaf ears. But I detect a definite change in the wind now -
http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/scotland/possible-longannet-closure-is-no-threat-to-power-supply-1.840182.
Cable is clueless if he really thinks England can keep the lights on in Scotland without any new coal plants, but it does seem that the SNP has finally got the message about the impending energy gap, and how critical this is (on both sides of the border). This from the Courier report:
[my emphasis].So Nicola & Fergus have been briefed on energy policy, and this time not by the usual WWF and FoE activists.
Again this could all be coincidence, but in the email I sent to Swinney a few weeks ago I attached the following graph UK Peak Demand v Generation Capacity graph - When will the lights go out?. A picture is worth a thousand words?
Does anyone know an MP on good terms with Cameron or Osborne?
Paul Matthews
Thanks for the links - not an enjoyable read, but very important.
Steven Richards and Hector P.
I agree with TBYJ. I don't believe we need to take a block view of such matters, that is just bigotry. As a Brit who was born in England and brought up to see himself as British I don't align myself with those north or south of the border who wish to see us parted.
It is a problem that any reaction like Hector P's is based on some reality - based on experience. Having lived in Scotland and on the borders of North Wales in my 70 years I know the truth of his remarks. BUT I also have very close Scots and Welsh friends. It was a surprise to me though in 2013 referendum that 45% of Scots obviously didn't see themselves as British.
About 700,000 Scots live in England (and welcome they are). Many Welsh and Irish (N&S) also live here and are also welcome IMO.
Yet even this morning, on this very story, the BBC were still giving air time to that idiot from WWF, Lang Banks, who insisted that there was no need for any coal or gas fired generators in Scotland. The obvious questions are:
1) He represents WWF, a wildlife charity, shouldn't he be campaigning for saving pandas or something, or at the very least all the birds and bats killed by large scale industrial plant whirling around in a rural environment?
2) Why do they give him so much exposure, and by doing so granting credibility to the rubbish he spouts?
Superbly put, lapogus (3:17 PM). That paragraph should be nailed to the doors of the Edinburgh parliament, and a good few other places as well.
Feb 17, 2015 at 12:43 PM | Hector Pascal
I once asked the Irish wife of a Scottish customer what her nationalist husband and fellow Scots thought of Rab C. Nesbit. She said that they thought it hilarious, but they couldn't stand the English laughing at it! Chip somewhere?
I thought Bishop Hill did very good by standing outside the Scots independence hype. I think it a pity all this has surfaced a year after the big vote. We are all prejudiced - it is a natural human trait. I've been ignored in a Welsh pub but my dad had a Welsh accent so I didn't do anything but walk out and thank god I didn't have to drink what was likely a crappy pint. Mind you, McEwans 'Champion' ale is a drink worth taking any kind of eyeball sledging.
I have never been to the Scottish countryside.
By watching documentaries on a big screen I maybe can feel just a little of the beauty.
But if I ever go there and see just 1 turbine anywhere the experience will be disgracefully and seriously diminished.
"Sturgeon is not a fool and neither was Alex Salmond before her". I beg to differ. Destroying your country's energy generation system simply to secure the support of a bunch of eco loons for independence was a mark of desperation not genius. If you are in any doubt as to the SNP's total knowledge vacuum regarding electricity generation then just listen to the rantings of their "energy minister" Fergus Ewing. He makes Ed Davey sound sensible.
tested
Energy policy is not devolved to Scotland. It remains the responsibility of Westminster.Nuclear energy, oil, coal, gas and electricity are reserved matters. The subsidy regime -the Renewables Obligation and Feed in tariff is also the responsibility of Westminster.
I am not entirely sure what you mean by saying, "Destroying your country's energy generation...". I suspect you might mean the aspirations of the SNP government to have renewable energy meet all of Scotland's electricity needs by 2020. if so, there are many who would agree that there are too many wind farms in Scotland and not enough in England. But then, the wind blows more in Scotland than England.
sam
Sam
You say that policy is not devolved, yet the Scottish Government has its own planning policy framework and approves local plans in energy and other areas. They have also set their own renewables subsidy levels for years under the SRO, with different levels for marine technologies than England:
http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Business-Industry/Energy/Obligation-12-13.
They have the power to decide all appeals and all Section 36 (over 50MW) planning applications.
They claim this gives them the power to veto any thermal power station they don't like: "Under the Electricity Act 1989, the building of any new nuclear power station in Scotland would require consent from Scottish Government Ministers (under Section 36 of the Electricity Act). This is accepted by the UK government despite the recent statement in the Calman Commission" (Sc. Govt. Website).
Political power without responsibility = a crisis in power supplies.
Euan Mearns has nicely summarised the situation in his recent analysis of the figures, see: "Gagging on Windpower", on the Energy Matters blog:
http://euanmearns.com/scotland-gagging-on-wind-power/#more-6460.