AMID the royal fanfare and gushing rhetoric surrounding the official
opening of the Beatrice offshore wind farm, spare a thought for the
working-class communities in Fife who are still paying the price for
Scotland’s renewables manufacturing failure.
How can it be that we have a quarter of Europe’s offshore wind resource but
we are fighting for scraps of work and value from our own market, while our
main fabrication yards in Fife lie almost empty and woefully under invested?
Once upon a time the yards in Fife fabricated the jackets and topsides for
the rigs and platforms that would deliver the North Sea oil and gas
revolution. It was a thriving part of a manufacturing industry that
supported the employment of more than 20,000 people.
Today in Methil a skeleton staff of 40 people work on a catch-up programme
for turbine pins, while Burntisland remains shut. There is the prospect of
a further 200 jobs through a contract for eight turbine jackets from the £2
billion NnG wind farm, but the truth is it’s a paltry return as 85 per cent
of those jackets will be built in Indonesia.
It’s the same old story as the bulk of jobs and prosperity go elsewhere. So
as the bunting blows in the Caithness wind, the Scottish Renewables lobby
and every politician that promised us a green jobs revolution should not be
congratulating themselves. Instead they should be cringing that we are
getting so badly rinsed.
It’s an inconvenient truth for some but what’s happening in our renewables
manufacturing sector is a national humiliation.
Gary Smith, GMB Scotland Secretary, Glasgow G3.
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