Letters / Who will pay for the subsidies and transmission lines after independence?

Contributed

24 February 2026 10:14

An open letter to John Swinney.

Dear Mr Swinney,

When Hannah Mary Goodlad introduced you at the December launch of the SNP’s new energy policy for independence, ‘It’s Scotland’s Energy’, you told her straight: “Your part of the world, Shetland, is at the very heart of Scotland’s energy story…”.

Your policy boasts of sufficient renewable energy “in the planning pipeline” to increase existing installations sixfold – to nineteen times Scotland’s winter maximum demand!

The plan is for island renewables, alone – Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles – to supply three times Scotland’s entire electricity demand. And Shetland will be, in your own words, “at the very heart” of it, on wild land and at sea on prime, traditional fishing grounds.

Hence, one supposes, the urgency to mollify islanders’ outrage with your new ‘National Islands Plan’.

I’m put in mind of Lewis Carroll’s wonderful poem, ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’:

“O Oysters, come and walk with us!”
“The Walrus did beseech.
“A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
“Along the briny beach;”

The outcome proved a ‘right stinker’ for the oysters who naively accepted the smiling invitation:

“A loaf of bread,” the Walrus said, “Is what we chiefly need;
“Pepper and vinegar besides “Are very good indeed
“Now if you’re ready, Oysters dear,
“We can begin to feed.”

Setting aside the technical and environmental insanity of your energy plan, I would venture, politely, to ask:

Who the heck is going to pay for all the renewables subsidies and otherwise unnecessary transmission lines after independence, when existing contracts expire? Are we to imagine that Westminster will force English and Welsh consumers to subsidise the industry of a foreign country, like Ireland, or France, to compete with their own?

They won’t need our “nineteen times winter maximum demand in renewables”. They will subsidise their own. We will sell electricity to them, as and when they need it, at wholesale market rates.

Any other arrangement must be negotiated. What shall we give them in return, continued use of Clyde nuclear bases? Or what?

Labour and its delusional Net Zero Czar, Miliband, will be gone. Their likely successors will end renewables subsidies and invest instead in small modular (nuclear) reactors (SMRs). Which, when all the carefully hidden, additional costs of renewables become public knowledge, will be seen to be vastly more economic and environmentally friendly than the lunacy promoted in ‘It’s Scotland’s Energy.”

So, Mr Swinney, who will pay for the subsidies and transmission lines after independence?

John Tulloch
Aberdeen

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