On a clear day, construction work on the giant Neart Na Gaoithe (NnG) wind farm can be seen from the coast of Fife but none of the 54 turbines will now be built in the desolate BiFab yards less than 10 miles away.
Ten years after Alex Salmond predicted Scotland would become the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy, the engineering work for the NnG project has gone to firms in China, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia. The turbines, once built here and shipped around the world, will be assembled in Dundee, but that work will support just 100 jobs.
It’s a far cry from the then first minister’s forecast that, after North Sea oil, green energy would be Scotland’s next boom industry.
And, while a 2010 report for the Scottish Government predicted wind energy could create up to 28,000 jobs here, the most recent figures show about 3,400 people work in the sector.
Industry experts, academics and trade unions point to a variety of reasons for the failure to gain a foothold in the international market for big engineering contracts with some fearing the dream of building a new manufacturing sector around green energy is already over.
Two huge wind farms – Seagreen and Neart Na Gaoithe – are being built off the east coast of Scotland but the huge turbines are being built abroad before being shipped around the world. Meanwhile, BiFab yards, miles away in Burntisland and Methil, inset, are shuttered after as unions warn the dream of a Scottish renewables windfall may be already over.
Pat Rafferty, Unite Scottish secretary, said: “The prediction of 28,000 jobs being created is probably right but they are not here. They are in the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia or Spain – everywhere but here. That will only continue unless we start to make investments.
“We need to sit down with the Scottish Government and find out if they are actually genuine about wanting to create a manufacturing base for the green jobs recovery.”
Nick Sharpe, director of strategy for industry body Scottish Renewables, says the problem is due to a lack of strategic thinking and investment across the whole of the UK, going back decades.
He said: “The UK has, for many decades, lacked an industrial strategy focused on maintaining and developing home- grown manufacturing capacity. While other countries have supported businesses that can deliver this kind of work, the UK has, to a large extent, not done so.
“It becomes incredibly difficult, in that environment, to develop local manufacturing that can compete in a global market like offshore wind.”
He said a recent report into offshore renewable energy found UK-made components were 10% to 15% more expensive than the most competitive global price.
He said: “In a situation where the UK Government’s competitive auction process has driven the cost of offshore wind energy below the wholesale price of electricity it is extremely challenging for developers to build these projects using large amounts of local content if that price differential is so large.”
Experts also cite the drive to push down renewable electricity costs. Jamie Stewart, deputy director at the Centre for Energy Policy at Strathclyde University, said: “What has happened at BiFab in a way symbolises the challenges faced in the past decade by the whole renewable energy industry here.
“We have seen the price of renewables coming down and, on top of that, there is a continual drive to push down the costs of producing electricity even further.
“Manufacturers here have struggled to compete with companies from overseas and part of that is to do with economy of scale. In other parts of the world there are some much bigger operations and some get a lot of state support.”
He did see grounds for optimism with offshore wind energy being the biggest area of renewable growth and one that could provide many jobs – but not in traditional manufacturing.
“We may have to accept that, although we have struggled to compete on the manufacturing side, we still have a lot of other positives to offer in terms of jobs – such as the use of our ports, health and safety expertise learned from the oil and gas sector, data use, and our management skills – and make a strategic decision to develop those instead.”
John Macaskill, director of offshore wind consultant firm OWC, agreed that the UK’s higher costs and the small size of its manufacturing sector made it difficult to compete.
He believes traditional manufacturing work to be a high-risk area, citing a number of large overseas firms who have lost money or even gone bust while trying to build turbine jackets at cut-throat prices. He said contracts like the ill-fated deal for BiFab to build jackets for eight of the NnG turbines showed the scale of the problem, not the possible solution.
He said: “It is a low margin segment of the offshore wind value chain with high risks, and you need scale and volume. How can a small Scottish yard doing eight jackets compete? I would not invest my money in that part of the value chain and it is not the place for Scotland to make bets on either.
“Scotland has a proud legacy of engineering, technology and service, especially in the oil and gas sector. We need to get over the white elephant of jacket manufacture and compete where we do well.”
But he does not think that manufacturing should be abandoned, saying: “I sincerely don’t think that UK industrial and economic policy is well suited or aimed at engineering and manufacturing as we are living through the result of decades of Westminster focus on financial services, services and property development as drivers of the economy.
“This is obvious folly and it has impacted areas of England as much as it has Scotland. It needs an entirely new industrial policy overhaul, something that is not really in Scotland’s gift. https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/bifab-unions-demand-leadership-strategy-and-investment-while-experts-warn-scotland-must-identify-and-exploit-new-skills-and-assets/?fbclid=IwAR0hbrY-9wtzn9zfZtoSF1tHYzcq28yEU5FyE_77jDtXHaTGliAGMOmsr50
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