Westminster and Scotland’s energy, fool me once…
Speymouth
Scotland is, by far and away, the most energy rich country of the islands of Britain and Ireland. Moreover it has more in the way of energy resources than just about any other country in Europe, with the exception of Norway (Russia’s vast fossil fuel resources are overwhelmingly concentrated in the Asian part of Russia and the Arctic regions of the far north, in the traditional lands of indigenous tribal peoples whom Russia shamelessly exploits and colonises.)
Despite Scotland producing far more electricity and gas than it requires for domestic consumption, Scots pay amongst the highest energy bills in Europe. Scotland produces over five times more gas than is needed for Scottish use, the rest is exported, mostly to the rest of the UK. This represents 62% of all UK gas production. Scotland produces around 240 Terawatt-hours (TWh) of gas annually but consumes only 42.7 TWh. In 2024, Scotland generated 38.4 TWh of electricity from renewable sources but consumed only 21.8 TWh. The surplus electricity is exported to the UK grid. The pricing structure of the privatised UK electricity grid means that Scottish producers are financially penalised.
Energy policy in the UK is reserved to the Westminster Parliament which remains wedded to a model which ensures that consumers in energy rich Scotland pay more in order to subsidise energy bills in the wealthy south of England.
Energy is shaping up to be a central battlefield in the debate on Scottish independence. Not only has the Labour government in Westminster failed dismally to reduce domestic energy bills, which was a key plank in Labour’s manifesto commitments, energy bills have continued to rise and Scottish consumers now find that they will be forced to pay a surcharge on their bills in order to pay for the expansion of nuclear energy in England. This levy is currently set at £1 per month, which does not seem much, but it is expected to be levied for decades.
According to a worst case scenario, consumers are collectively likely to pay around £34 billion in today’s prices before any electricity is generated from England’s new nuclear power plant at Sizewell C. Scottish consumers will pay around £2.7 billion of this, for a nuclear power plant in England which Scotland neither wants nor needs. As Starmer ramps up the UK’s push towards nuclear energy and puts increased pressure on Scotland to go down the same path, the extra levy paid by consumers will only increase, all the more so when we consider that nuclear energy developments are invariably associated with ballooning costs and lengthy delays. The initial price tag for Sizewell C was forecast at £20 billion, this has now almost doubled to £38 billion. Another nuclear development, Hinkley Point C, was initially forecast to be operational by 2017 at a cost of £18bn. It is now not expected to be completed for a further four to six years following pandemic-related delays, and is set to cost around £46bn.
Nuclear energy does not create domestic energy security either. The uranium which fuels nuclear power plants must be imported. The leading producer is Kazakhstan, an authoritarian state which is closely aligned with Russia. Kazakhstan produces over 40% of the world’s uranium. Other major producers are Canada, Australia, Namibia, Niger, and Russia. The UK has no commercially significant domestic uranium resources.
As of 2023, 34% of Scottish households, or approximately 861,000, were in fuel poverty. 19.4% of all Scottish households were in extreme fuel poverty. When a household is struggling to make ends meet, every single penny on energy bills makes a difference.
With independence, Scottish households could benefit from substantially reduced energy bills, these lower energy costs would also provide a major boost to the Scottish economy, promoting industry and development and creating jobs. Scotland’s vast energy resources would be harnessed for the benefit of those who rightfully own them – the people of Scotland – and we could put an end to Scotland’s wealth and resources being siphoned off in order to subsidise energy bills in the south of England and to bloat the bank accounts of the owners of the large private energy companies.
The Scottish Government is proposing that Scottish communities could be given the right to own up to 20% of renewables projects in their local area. The First Minister has also outlined plans to cut the nuclear levy and to end what he calls the “folly” of constraint payments which charge consumers for wind farms which have to shut down due to lack of grid capacity.
The First Minister argued that these measures together would lead to a reduction of one third in domestic energy bills in Scotland but given Westminster’s iron grip on energy policy they would only be possible with independence.
Energy secretary Ed Miliband has already ruled out proposals to introduce a zonal pricing structure in the UK energy market on the grounds that it would lead to higher bills in London and the south-east of England. Such a scheme would lead to substantially lower energy bills in energy producing zones such as Scotland. With independence, Westminster objections cease to be a consideration. Neither would Scotland be forced to foot the bill for upgrades to the UK energy grid which are aimed at facilitating the export of Scottish renewable energy to England, electricity for which Scotland is not fairly compensated and for which Scottish producers are forced to pay extra to the grid. With independence, Scotland’s energy producers would receive international market prices for the electricity Scotland exports. We have a choice, some of the most expensive energy bills in Europe under Westminster, or some of the least expensive with independence. With Westminster we can have expensive nuclear energy and nuclear waste foisted upon us, or with independence we can develop Scotland’s energy resources to suit Scotland’s needs. With Westminster we can see Scottish workers in the oil and gas sector thrown on the scrapheap in an echo of the betrayal of workers in Scotland’s heavy industries in the 1980s, or with independence we can have a just transition to a sustainable economy based on renewable energy.
In the last decades of the 20th century, Scotland’s immense fossil fuel resources were taken by Westminster governments which paid Scotland in mass unemployment, deindustrialisation, poverty, contempt, and foodbank use. Scotland’s wealth was taken to fund the redevelopment of London’s Docklands and Thatcher’s loadsamoney culture of greed and conspicuous consumption in the City of London. Scotland has been blessed with a second chance in the form of our huge renewable energy potential, a potential which is nowhere close to being developed to the full. We’d be fools to allow Westminster to rip us off again. As the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
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