Democratise Energy, Energise Democracy

Yesterday, The Scotsman newspaper reported, in gushing tones: ‘Berwick Bank wind farm secures ‘monumental’ UK contract backing in huge Scottish energy boost.’ It would, the paper said: “deliver the biggest single procurement of offshore wind energy in British and European history.” This project could become become the world’s largest offshore wind farm. According to the report, the Berwick Bank wind farm, located about 24 miles from the Scottish coast in East Lothian, “will have an estimated capacity of 4.1GW, which could generate enough electricity each year to power every household in Scotland twice over” and “Up to 307 turbines could be constructed across an area four times the size of Edinburgh.”

The project promises more gigantism, in fact it’s a model of growth is consistent and venerated. But, unlike much of the media, people across Scotland are asking questions about the renewables revolution. When we say that Berwick Bank “could generate enough electricity each year to power every household in Scotland twice over” aren’t we ignoring the fact that we already generate surplus of renewable energy in Scotland?

If we could build another five wind farms “four times the size of Edinburgh” would this also be good? Is there, to coin a phrase, a limit to growth?

To be 100% clear, I am 100% in favour of renewable energy, and have advocated for it for thirty years or so. But what we see in Scotland, and elsewhere, is corporate energy giants moving from one form of production to another. Other brands and models of how we ‘do’ renewable energy are available.

Energy Systems

Berwick Bank aside, Scotland is in the midst of an onshore renewable energy revolution. It’s a revolution that could produce clean energy, thousands of good jobs, a reliable source of income for rural communities, and conquer fuel poverty. But it does none of these things. It is creating uproar and outrage by communities swamped by wind-farm proposals and the accompanying infrastructure, and shocked by the industrialisation of the Highlands and Islands, with little benefit to see for it. Many communities experience renewable energy as something done to them, rather than something for them or by them.  See these issues explored in the Scottish Beacon’s Power Shift series here.

The energy system that the mass of renewable energy feeds into is a complete shambles. The renewable energy sector is huge and growing. According to Equitable Energy Research the combined capacity of operational onshore and offshore wind projects in the Highlands and Islands is around 5 GW. If all projects currently in the pipeline were to be built, the total capacity could exceed 25 GW. But it is supplying energy to a supply system that can’t cope.

The level of dysfunctionality at play here is exposed by the fact that energy companies are paid NOT to produce wind power at times when the grid can’t cope with the amount its generating. As Ben Cooke at The Times explains [The grid is struggling — and our green future hangs in the balance] :

“As the government races headlong towards its goal of powering the country with 95 per cent renewable and nuclear energy by 2030, the strain on Britain’s grid is growing and with it, curtailment costs. In the first six months of this year bill payers have paid £810 million for wind farms in remote areas with little local electricity demand to switch off and gas plants to switch on, and Neso predicts that without massive grid investment, those costs could balloon to about £8 billion by 2030.”

If you wanted a metaphor for everything that is wrong with Late Britain, here it is. Endemic fuel poverty sits alongside enormous corporate profit, while a moratorium on onshore wind in England, maintained by the Conservatives for fourteen years, is in stark contrast to a Gold Rush for renewables in Scotland. We have a crisis of over-abundance of supply alongside people in the coldest parts of the UK unable to adequately heat their homes.

If we stand back from this crisis, we see that the problem is one of gigantism, an addiction to growth, and an inability to stand up to corporate power. The onshore renewables industry is vast – frequently foreign-owned – and far from the demand it is supposed to supply, leading to massive costs of distribution.

In a recent article in the National (The myths and the facts about Scotland’s energy), Karen Adam the MSP for Banffshire and Buchan Coast since 2021 wrote: “When people say “but the companies are foreign!”, I want to gently ask, does anyone say whisky isn’t ours because some distilleries have overseas ownership?”

I want to gently reply, Yes, yes we do.

The problem of being imprisoned within our current, failing mindsets is neither unique to energy nor confined to Scotland. We can easily look to other near neighbours for examples of better practice: to the Faroes, where fuel poverty is a thing of the past, or to Denmark across the North Sea where community-owned wind is at 52%. In Scotland, it is 0.2%.

The tragedy of living in an energy-abundant country, suffering endemic fuel poverty, while exporting vast amounts of energy for consumers hundreds of miles away is clear to everyone. But what is to be done? Here are three ideas.

Lost Futures

William Gibson’s famous observation that “The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed,” could have been written for Scottish Renewables. One of the recurring complaints from communities impacted by all of this is that it feels like the ‘Wild West’, with seemingly little or no strategic overview or plan, and a planning process which is, to be charitable, opaque.

So the first idea would be to implement some form of strategic thinking to an area characterised as a sort of feeding frenzy of giant multinational corporations. Given that Energy is a reserved matter, this may take some struggle, but is essential nevertheless.

Democratise Energy

The second idea is really to change the way we are viewing energy itself. The challenge is to imagine a different kind of energy system altogether based on addressing energy as a human need, not a commodity, and for the energy system to be decentralised and put in the hands of public ownership. This could take different forms: micro-renewables owned by community trusts and larger-scale projects owned by national bodies.

As it stands, the renewables revolution offers the opportunity to revitalise the Highlands and Islands and provide an income stream for sustainable housing and improved infrastructure. Instead, we are industrialising the highlands for the benefit of private corporations.

Liberate Technology

The third idea is related to one and two, but really mean to explore what the new technologies can do for energy democracy and environmental justice. At the moment we have a singular model, not just of gigantism but of a National Grid which is never really been questioned.

‘The Grid’ stands like a figment of an Iain M Banks novel, a gigantic piece of technology that is woven into the fabric of everyone’s lives and is considered an unquestionable good whilst being unable to fulfil even its most basic purpose. Everything must be sacrificed on the altar of this entity: landscape, ecosystems, serenity, peatlands, birdlife and wildlife.

The Grid is a testament to centralised Britain, decaying and archaic but completely unquestioned. It is based on an outdated energy system that is no longer fit for purpose.

As Ben Cooke notes: “Britain’s grid was built to move energy from a few big power stations, running on coal, gas or nuclear, mostly near the middle of the country. But increasingly, we’re using it to carry energy from the windy peripheries of northern Scotland and the North Sea, and from solar farms all over the place.”

It’s becoming very clear that energy infrastructure, like political power needs to be radically decentralised.

The Power Shift

These questions, about scale, distribution and ownership are going to be explored at Celtic Connections this Sunday. Ticketes here: Talk: Power Shift – The Real Energy Question.

These are echoes of the same issues down the decades: of energy, Unjust Transition and resource exploitation. From the Power to the Glens ambition of Tom Johnstone in the late 1940s; to the use of North Sea Oil to prop up the Thatcher government in the 1970s and 80s; to the use of coal as a tool to break the back of union power in the mid 1980s. There is also clearly a mirror to the issues of landed power and ownership. Who owns the land is the same fundamental question as who owns the wind and who owns the tides?

Join us this Sunday at Celtic Connections: Talk: Power Shift – The Real Energy Question

Read the Alternative Editorial: Power Shifting In Scotland