Letters / Would Holyrood do any better?
Angela Sutherland invites me to support Scottish independence.
Certainly, the Westminster shambles has showered bounteous gifts on the SNP’s campaign. But would Holyrood do any better and how would it affect important areas of our lives?
“Hame is whaar da heart is”, so how would Shetland fare?
The Viking Energy wind farm will soon be exporting electricity south. Other large developments are planned, on and offshore, purportedly to electrify the oil and gas industry and produce so-called “green hydrogen” using excess energy when the grid is oversupplied.
Major ongoing UK subsidy will be essential to realise these heady ambitions.
However, independent Scotland would be just another foreign country, like Ireland or France. Our renewables would be excluded from future UK power auctions and subsidy.
Thus, we would have to compete on an unsubsidised, “merchant basis” against UK and European nuclear and renewables, clobbering profits and discouraging further investment. The SIC’s flagship Orion project intended to replace Shetland’s oil industry would suffer with the rest.
Moving on, fish and fishing are Shetland’s biggest industry and could be much bigger IF Brexit is managed competently.
However, the Scottish Government has licensed vast offshore wind developments on important fishing grounds and stated its intention to re-join the EU, handing back control of access and quotas under the hated Common Fisheries Policy.
Moreover, the previous ‘UK derogation’ would not be available meaning significantly lower quotas even than before Brexit.
Meanwhile, as UK electricity soars towards 67p/unit, Faroese electricity has been held at 17.5p/unit since 2020, reflecting shining competence versus the disastrous mismanagement of our supplies.
The SNP-Greens’ policy is to ban future oil and gas developments, even though we cannot yet run our country without fossil fuels. This indefensible folly would inevitably make matters worse.
In particular, the national grid needs conventional power to stabilise inherently unstable renewable energy meaning, realistically, a choice between nuclear (also taboo) and gas. Take your pick.
Petrochemical plants also need oil and gas (or coal) as feedstock to produce plastics, fertiliser and many other products.
So, unless we are going to live without an electricity grid and petrochemicals, we will have to import oil and gas, the latter, ironically, having three times the ‘carbon intensity’ of domestically-produced gas, making us ever more dependent on unreliable, despotic regimes like Russia.
Factor in the many years “fair ferry funding” was withheld (£5.5 million/year), centralisation of public services and Shetland’s exclusion from the forthcoming fixed links study and we see why, after 20 years’ experience of devolution, the SIC has decided to explore options for self-governing powers as it did in the 1970s.
John Tulloch
Aberdeen
