Labour applying brakes to renewables
The SNP’s plan to re-organise local government with only three months consultation is rightly controversial. Like other half-baked initiatives it will be poorly considered, intended primarily for media headlines and to advance their 20-year centralisation juggernaut.
Indeed. Their flagship policy, “It’s Scotland’s Energy”, launched by Hannah Mary Goodlad and John Swinney last December, is a shining example of such incompetence.
They blame Westminster for high electricity prices (true) but promote the fantasy that taking control of our own electricity industry will magically “cut electricity prices by a third”.
Sadly, the most basic analysis shows this to both false and disastrous. Withdrawal of UK subsidies with independence would make renewables completely unaffordable (SN, 15/12/25, “What could possibly go wrong?”).
In particular, their plan to increase Scottish renewables to nineteen times our winter maximum demand is palpably absurd. It could not possibly be viable without massive UK subsidy which will end with independence.
Indeed. Ten months on the Westminster Labour government isn’t waiting for independence to ‘poop the party’. Realising renewables are unaffordable, they plan to rein in development now, especially, in Scotland.
The Daily Telegraph reports:
“John Healey, chancellor, declared that Labour’s new priority was “first and foremost cheaper energy” in last week’s budget.
“Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh (said), ‘the public doesn’t measure the success of our energy system in gigawatts – they measure it in bills’.”
And (energy minister) “Michael Shanks told peers that government was drawing up a new plan to prevent too much future capacity being built in Scotland, which is behind the biggest (grid) bottlenecks.”
The renewables party is over. The SNP must repent of their folly and produce a realistic energy policy that is both affordable and meets the needs of ordinary, hard working Scots.
John Tulloch
Aberdeen
