I NOTE with interest your article “UK would ‘have Scotland over a barrel on
renewables'” (The Herald, July 8).

Contrary to “Coalition sources” quoted in The Herald, Scotland’s
electricity generation capacity is a huge asset both for Scotland and for
our neighbours, and of course it is developers, financiers and utilities
from across the UK and Europe which bring forward renewables developments
in order to supply their customer base across the UK.

Scotland is a net exporter of electricity to the rest of the UK at present
and work is ongoing to enhance the existing infrastructure for this flow,
which will increase the export capacity by more than one-third between 2011
and 2016. In addition, work to build a new 1.8GW connection between
Scotland and England down the west coast is under way and scheduled to
complete by the end of 2015.

Plans for another 1.8GW down the east coast are also being drawn up by the
transmission owners. And further to these, Scotland’s network owners have
indicated their intention to submit proposals that will see our export
capacity to the rest of the UK increase to 14.1GW by 2020 – more than four
times more than current capacity.

Why is this important? Because Ofgem estimates that the gap between
electricity generation and peak demand in the UK is tighter than ever
before – with increasing risk of interruption to supply. Unfortunately, and
as Ofgem has pointed out, many of our European neighbours have a similar
lack of sufficient electricity generation capacity, and the UK has limited
interconnector capacity to the continent. Given this situation it is no
surprise that EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger has spoken of how
Scotland’s renewables can make Scotland a “power house of Europe”. That
Scotland’s electricity generation can help keep the lights on across these
islands should be welcomed by all sides of the constitutional debate.

Fergus Ewing,
Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism, St Andrew’s House,
Regent Road, Edinburgh,


SAS Volunteer

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