Amid the bloated claims that are made about what renewable energy will deliver for Scotland, the technology to which least attention is paid is the one that actually delivers most – hydro electricity.
While the potential for wave and tidal power remain unproven and the economics of offshore wind massively subsidy-dependent, the absolute is that Scotland could increase its hydro output substantially and at far less cost.
Maybe it is time for that possibility to be taken more seriously. The problem is that we are all so familiar with hydro that it tends not to be thought of as trendily “renewable”. Yet there is nothing in Scotland more natural or renewable than the water that fills the dams and drives the turbines.
Sixty years ago, the first great scheme undertaken by the North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board was set in motion at Loch Sloy. The board’s chairman was Tom Johnston who, as Secretary of State for Scotland in the wartime government, had piloted through parliament, with Churchill’s support, the act which established the Hydro Board.
To Johnston, the Loch Sloy project was “more than a great engineering achievement”, though it was certainly that as well. It was representative of “the new spirit that exists where before there was only depopulation and despair … an effective answer to any who may lack faith in the future of Scotland”.
These noble words remind us that the purpose of such great energy initiatives should be social and economic as well as commercial. And it was for these other ends that Johnston knew these schemes must be driven through.
Who, today, would argue with Johnston’s vision? It was the work of the Hydro Board which transformed social conditions in the Highlands and Islands by bringing power to the remotest islands and glens. When the board started its work, just 1% of croft households had access to electricity.
When Johnston was operating, the term “renewable energy” had not been invented. Yet today, it is the work of the long-defunct Hydro Board which allows Scotland to proclaim “renewables targets” that are far higher than for the rest of the United Kingdom.
As I never tired of pointing out when I was a politician myself, we have a 12% head start for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with present-day politicians. We owe it all to Tom Johnston’s generation, their vision and determination.
And that, sadly, is what is missing from the present-day approach to renewable energy in Scotland. There has been little or no regard for that wider social interest. There is no inspiring message that harnessing natural resources must mean more than the calculation of subsidy for its beneficiaries.
The Hydro Board created tens of thousands of jobs in Scotland by getting on and doing things in the teeth of vested interests. In contrast, the supposed “renewables revolution” has created hardly any jobs because snail-like progress, bogged down in interminable objections, resulted in developers going elsewhere for their hardware. The wind may blow in Scotland, but the jobs have gone to Denmark and Germany.
Or take what has happened with hydro itself. I carried my enthusiasm into government and ensured that ROCs – the subsidy mechanism for renewables – would be paid on hydro electricity in return for an agreement that SSE and other generators would invest in the refurbishment of power stations. However, the Treasury insisted that this would only apply to schemes of under 20 megawatts. I regarded this as irrational but could not win the argument.
So how did the power companies respond? They actually tore capacity out of their hydro stations in order to get below 20 megawatts and thereby qualify for ROCs.
Irresponsible? Tom Johnston must have been turning in his grave while the pretence that there was any cohesive approach to renewable energy on the part of government took another knock. The same mad situation persists today.
It is examples like these which highlight the need for a powerful public body to lead the faltering renewables revolution instead of leaving it to the often conflicting aims of government departments and the market orthodoxies of Ofgem.
Throughout the period that the North of Scotland Hydro Board existed, there was a political consensus around the need for that kind of body to provide the leadership and ensure the investment that transformational projects required.
And, of course, private businesses also flourished as a result of that great public project. It was a real public-private partnership.
All of that ended with privatisation and fragmentation of the electricity industry in the 1980s, and that particular Humpty is not going to be put together again. Yet surely there is still something to be learned and applied from the inspiring precedent of the Hydro Board.
Somebody has to provide leadership and make sure that the places most in need of economic benefit from the renewables opportunity actually obtain it. Any fool can set targets. Under existing conditions, they will not be delivered.
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