Mark Latham
Deputy Business Editor
Only six per cent of the 30,020 jobs projected to be created in Scotland by
2015 through the growth of the offshore wind industry have actually
materialised, the Sunday Herald can reveal.
A 2010 report on the future of the sector commissioned by industry body
Scottish Renewables forecast that, under the most optimistic scenario,
30,020 full-time equivalent jobs would be in existence by 2015 and that
this number would grow to 48,554 by 2020.
But the most recent figures show that in 2013 just 1,842 people were
employed in the sector in 2013: a figure that is unlikely to have changed
substantially as no offshore wind farms have been built in Scottish waters
since then.
Those 1,842 created jobs are however more than twice the number of the
study’s worst case scenario projection of 741 jobs by 2015, but far short
of the 17,076 estimated under a second “more moderate” development scenario
and considerably less than the 5,346 projected under the study’s third
scenario of the number of jobs that would be created by 2015 “if Scotland
fails to capture the economic benefits of offshore wind development.”
The gap between optimism and reality for Scotland’s offshore wind industry
was laid bare last week when the South Korean multinational Samsung Heavy
Industries said it would not be going ahead with a planned £100 million
offshore wind turbine factory in Methil in Fife, which would have brought
500 jobs to one of Scotland’s most deprived areas.
The project was Scotland’s last remaining hope of creating hundreds of
construction jobs in the offshore wind sector, after Spanish wind power
firm Gamesa earlier this year dropped plans to build a wind turbine factory
and servicing yard for the offshore energy sector in Leith, which would
have seen the creation of 800 high-skilled engineering jobs.
In the end the Methil project – which received £6 million from Scottish
Enterprise – only led to the creation of 20 research and development jobs
following the installation of a 7MW test turbine in the Firth of Forth in
2013, which is now likely to be sold to the Glasgow-based Offshore
Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult.
If offshore wind finally takes off in Scotland (so far only one offshore
wind farm, the 180MW Robin Rigg farm in the Solway Firth, has been
installed in Scottish waters) Scottish Renewables believes that more jobs
will be created through the operation and maintenance of wind farms than
from the construction of turbines or components.
Lindsay Roberts, senior policy manager for offshore wind at the industry
body, told the Sunday Herald that the 2010 report’s best case scenario
prediction of 30,020 jobs by 2015 was predicated on an assumption that
there would be 10GW of installed capacity in Scottish waters by 2020.
“That is clearly now unachievable,” she said. “We appear to be on track to
deliver within the lower scenario ranges.”
“The industry across the UK, but particularly in Scotland, is adjusting to
a markedly different policy and funding landscape to that envisaged just a
few years ago.
“The visibility of a sustainable market throughout the 2020s is the single
most important driver of cost reduction in offshore wind. This is partly
due to the ability to create a market of sufficient size to drive
competition between multiple turbine suppliers and that’s why clarity over
the UK Government’s long term support for this sector is so important.”
Roberts disagreed with criticism from the anti-wind farm lobby that
Scotland’s deeper waters and more extreme wind conditions make it less
suitable for offshore wind farms than England.
“The shallower, more benign, waters found south of the border were a
perfect place for a young offshore wind industry to start in the UK but our
technology and experience has now developed to a level that makes
exploiting more challenging sites around the UK and in Scotland, not just
possible, but desirable,” she said.
Linda Holt, spokesperson for the campaign group Scotland Against Spin, said
that Samsung’s decision to pull out of the Methil project was “inevitable
because Scotland’s offshore wind industry is a dead duck” and that the
estimates of 30,020 jobs coming to Scotland by 2015 were “hilarious”.
Holt points to the fact that generous public subsidies have spawned almost
20 wind farms off the coast of England and Wales over the last decade but
during that time only one offshore farm has been built in Scottish waters.
“The main reason is that the technical and financial challenges of building
and servicing wind farms off the Scottish coast are very much greater than
for wind farms in England and Wales. These are located in shallower waters,
with less harsh weather and closer to centres of demand for electricity
than Scottish ones would be.”
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