For more than 30 years, I have been an enthusiast for developing the potential of wave and tidal power. That takes me all the way back to Salter’s Ducks, which were bobbing around at that time.
I place that fact on record in order to give context to my next statement – which is that I now think Scotland is being taken for a dangerous ride with the wildly hyperbolic claims about what these energy sources “will” – never “might” – deliver.
Let me describe some stages in my journey. In the 1980s, the Tory government brought the research programme on wave and tidal to an abrupt conclusion. That was short-sighted and wrong – though, in fairness, it predated the climate-change debate and worldwide drive for clean energy.
When I became energy minister in 2001, there was not even a line for wave and tidal in the DTI’s renewable-energy budget. I remedied this and did everything I could to encourage these technologies. The money we put in would dwarf the absurdly hyped Saltire Prize – of which more later.
There was, then, one operational wave project in the UK, or possibly the world – at Portnahaven, on Islay. I well remember the date on which I visited it – September 11, 2001, and I first heard of the Twin Towers attacks while standing in the courtyard of the nearby Bruichladdich Distillery.
Portnaven worked, within limits, for one good reason – it was built into the rocks so that the waves did not buffet the technology in the way that had plagued devices rooted to the seabed. I was sufficiently enthused to make a few more millions available, with matched funding provided by Jim Forbes, at that time chief executive of Scottish and Southern, who shared my hopes for wave power.
The company, Wavegen, was supposed to come up with incremental advances on the Portnahaven technology which would be located in the sea lochs of the Western Isles. I envisaged a chain of these things: small schemes to get the technology started and gradually building in significance. It never happened and the money was never taken up.
Increasingly, I started to form the reluctant opinion that wave-power developers, of whom there are many, were more interested in research-and-development money than in actual delivery. Nonetheless, at the request of Highlands and Islands Enterprise, we put more millions into Emec (European Marine Energy Centre), the testing station in Orkney.
A great deal of hope was also invested in Pelamis, the sea-snake device developed by Ocean Power Delivery, an Edinburgh company which had roots going back to the Salter era.
There was much talk of lost opportunities when they took Pelamis off to Portuguese waters for experiments rather than doing it in Scotland.
There was a lot less publicity for what happened next. Within a few weeks, Pelamis had started leaking and the tests were abandoned. I am told that they are now working on a next-phase version of Pelamis, which we can only hope proves more reliable than the previous phase.
I quote this history only in order to demonstrate that I am far from being hostile to the development of wave-power technology in Scotland.
At every opportunity, I encouraged it and used taxpayers’ money to help fund it. But what I find increasingly difficult to stomach are the ludicrous claims being made by the Scottish Government, and faithfully relayed in the media, about what it “will” deliver.
Let us be brutally honest. Until now, it has delivered virtually nothing; not here, not anywhere in the world. And while I fully support continued R&D, it is a complete con trick to present wave power, along with other marine renewables, as the answer to our energy prayers.
Hilariously, the Saltire Prize – a £10million jackpot for the rival boffins to aspire to – has been delayed until 2017, by which time, as Iain Gray pointed out, Alex Salmond will be entitled to his bus pass.
More importantly, by that time, unless some more realistic energy policy is pursued, Scotland will be an importer of electricity because of the policies now being pursued.
Neither are the inflated claims made for marine renewables ever backed up by figures – although a Scottish Government press release boasting of all these wonderful developments managed to confuse 200 gigawatts – which would be enough to power most of Britain – with the 200 gigawatt hours aspired to in the foreseeable future. Sites have been identified in the Pentland Firth for tidal projects, but so what? The engineering and environmental challenges have not even been contemplated yet. And, again, nobody has begun to calculate the costs to the consumer even if these can be overcome.
Nobody ever got poor by underestimating the critical faculties of the Scottish media (with distinguished exceptions) but surely it is time that a hard look was taken at the realities of this issue rather than simply swallowing whole the self-serving press releases.
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