£250 for living near a pylon is fine, but do we really need more of them?
Scotland needs a wind-power plan that spells out what communities are going to get out of this vastly lucrative industry
The offer of £250 a year off electricity bills for households within 500 metres of new infrastructure will probably be quite effective. It is a sum not to be sniffed at by many people whose consent is not usually sought for anything that happens around them.
It’s also to Labour’s credit that it is at least thinking about how communities at the sharp end of the great energy transition can see direct benefit. The Tories never went near that while the SNP-run Scottish Government has had 18 years to develop community benefit and never lifted a finger.
The former leader of Highland Council, Dr Michael Foxley, wrote recently that when the first windfarm appeared in 1991, at Novar, they negotiated a payment of £5,000 per megawatt (MW) for the community. Index-linked, that would now be £12,500. Instead, he said, the current average which developers stump up is £3,000 per MW.
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Treating communities fairly
There are people who don’t like windfarms and are uninterested in community benefit. They are, however, a minority and if communities feel they are being treated fairly, they will be supportive. Increasingly, however, they believe they are being treated extremely unfairly, in both financial and democratic terms, and I tend to agree.
The first question should not be whether compensation will be paid for living close to a shiny new pylon but whether there is a need for that pylon to be built at all. This seems such a statement of the obvious that it should not need to be written. In fact, however, it raises questions which communities across Scotland are asking with increasing urgency.
In any sane system – ie, one not driven by commercial interests – the starting point would be to ask “how much power do we need?” The follow-up would be: “Where should it most sensibly come from?” Having established these parameters, a rational strategy would not be difficult to compose or sell to the great majority of public opinion.
Unfortunately, what has evolved in Scotland is almost the exact opposite of that rational approach. The race is on to build as much generation capacity as possible and then put in place the infrastructure that will carry it to market. If it’s too much capacity, too bad. If the infrastructure proves surplus to requirements, that’s a pity. We will be reassured retrospectively that intentions were good.
‘Vital to growth’
This issue is well summarised in the consultation paper issued yesterday by the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, which includes the “£250 off your bills” idea.
“One of the drivers of this problem,” it states, “is that building renewable generation is outpacing network build… Rapid expansion of the transmission network is required to reduce this issue, and it will not be possible to deliver a secure electricity supply, vital to growth and prosperity, without a transmission network that can transport it.”
All true, but it ignores the possibility that there are two ways to address this imbalance. The alternative is to put a brake on developing massive new projects, or multiple smaller ones, until there is clear quantification of demand and where the market wants it to come from. Neither of these indicators points towards limitless demand from Scotland.
Already, ludicrous amounts of money are being gifted to developers in constraint payments because the transmission network cannot support the power they generate. I am reminded of Major Major’s father in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 who was paid for not growing alfalfa and the more alfalfa he didn’t grow, the more he was paid for not growing it.
Before adding to that absurdity, it would make more sense to hasten the development of storage so that the surplus already being generated can be accommodated. Then plan – if that is not a dirty word – how much more capacity is required and where it is going to come from.
A windy day
The UK Government paper which recently (and rightly) ruled out zonal pricing also contained a welcome commitment to “deliver a more strategic and co-ordinated approach to the energy system, provide stronger signals for efficient siting of new assets and improve overall operational efficiency”. Undoubtedly, these “signals” will point to generation closer to the main markets, which are in the south.
Until that “strategic and co-ordinated approach” emerges, we should be very careful about the assumptions which are driving current policy in Scotland. Otherwise the Scottish Government’s one-club approach to energy policy could leave us with an awful lot to recriminate about.
Where I’m sitting, yesterday was a very windy day and, sure enough, 63 per cent of our electricity was coming from renewables. But it is worth noting that, even on such a day, ten per cent was coming from nuclear and 20 per cent from interconnectors with the continent (most of it also nuclear). Increasingly, Scottish renewables will be selling into a competitive low-carbon market; not one of open-ended demand.
The usual suspects are trying to peddle the narrative that “it’s Scotland’s wind” and it is being stolen from us by the wicked English. Nothing could be further from the truth. Insofar as the Scottish resource is being exploited, it is by invitation of the Scottish Government who flogged the ScotWind licences without the infrastructure existing and seem impervious to legitimate concerns about over-capacity.
As a long-term supporter of renewables, I want to see them play a leading part in our generation mix with the benefits extending to the periphery where the resource is strongest. It’s as a supporter that I believe there is now an urgent need for a clear strategy to be spelt out – which also answers the question of what communities are going to get out of a vastly lucrative industry.
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