The news that renewable power has overtaken nuclear to become the main
source of electricity in Scotland is a significant and welcome step towards
the Scottish Government’s targets on renewables and the long-term idea of
transforming Scotland into a 100% renewable nation.
The Government has set itself the goal of generating all of the country’s
electricity from renewables by 2020 and it remains an extremely ambitious
but reachable target for a fairly obvious reason: Scotland is a windy,
wave-lashed island and has some of the highest wind and wave energy
potential of any country in the world.
However, even with yesterday’s news from the UK Department of Energy and
Climate Change on electricity generation indicating that Scotland is
heading in the right direction on the 2020 vision, there remain some
significant obstacles to achieving it and some reasons to be cautious.
One of the most significant is the fact that wind power has reached the
point where further development should only be taken forward with
considerable care. Many of the most promising – and least controversial –
onshore sites for wind farms have already gone, which leaves those that are
either in scenic locations such as national parks, or sites where there
would be great public resistance. As an alternative, offshore wind farm
sites are extremely promising, but this is a sector of the industry that is
still in its infancy.
The same problem applies, but even more so, to wave energy, as the recent
news about the wave-power company Pelamis shows. The firm has gone into
administration after it failed to find a partner that could take its
technology into serious production. This is a persistent problem in the
sector and demonstrates once again that further investment is needed in
renewable technology as well as the infrastructure to transmit green energy
to the national grid. The Scottish Government says it regrets Pelamis going
into administration, but the Government must also recognise that, if 2020
or anything close to it is to happen, more investment will be needed to
grow renewable capacity at a much faster rate.
Until that can be achieved, a mix of energy, including nuclear, will remain
necessary and desirable, not least because there are still questions about
how renewable energy sources can be made secure and predictable.
Yesterday’s figures on electricity show Scotland is taking some major steps
towards reducing its reliance on fossil fuels but they are steps on a long
road.
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