Engineers launch scathing attack on Salmond’s ‘unrealistic’ energy policy

One of Scotland’s oldest and most-respected professional engineering associations has launched an extraordinary attack on the energy policy of the SNP Government.

The Institute of Shipbuilding and Engineering (IESIS) has accused the Scottish Government of promoting “meaningless figures … divorced from reality” and demanded that decisions related to Scotland’s future energy security be wrested from political and commercial influence and placed in the hands of qualified technicians “independent of party politics and departmental rivalries”.

IESIS, which regards itself as an inheritor of Scotland’s venerable and world-beating tradition of practical engineering expertise, has also accused the Scottish Government and its civil service advisers of being “plain wrong” in its projections of the capabilities of renewable power.

“The Scottish Government’s electricity generation policy of 50% from renewable sources and 50% from coal with carbon capture and storage by 2020 neglects the major issue of technical feasibility. It is very unlikely that achieving even 25% of the operational capacity from renewable resources by 2020 will be feasible,” Professor Ian Macleod, IESIS’s energy spokesman told the Sunday Herald.

The comments came in the week that UK energy secretary Ed Miliband announced that 10 nuclear power stations are to be built in Britain at a cost of up to £50 billion as the Westminster Government attempts to prevent the threat of regular power cuts by the middle of the coming decade.

Mr Miliband said that the construction of the stations should be quick enough to help to meet Britain’s 2050 target of reducing carbon emissions by 80% while bolstering energy security as North Sea gas supplies decline.

The Scottish Government has alienated business support in Scotland through its opposition to new nuclear power stations in Scotland, and prompted fears of disastrous future energy shortages.

The engineering body contends that planning for the replacement of baseload power stations is “a long way behind schedule” and that “the risk of the lights going out in Scotland in the coming decade is high.” IESIS, which has not previously intervened in the debate over retention of nuclear capacity in Scotland, said that “the Scottish Government’s decision to omit nuclear is badly informed and not based on a proper risk analysis. The risk of plutonium being abused is far smaller than not having power at all when we run out of oil and gas as we are likely to do. Nuclear can make a significant contribution, when oil becomes scarce”.

The engineering body reserved its most scathing comments on the Scottish Government’s assumptions about the “potential” of renewables. The body, which strongly supports the development of renewable technologies, said: “There are only two mature technologies for renewables for Scottish electricity production – hydro and wind. Hydro can be increased but not significantly. Wind is very expensive – especially offshore wind – and because of its intermittency it will not be possible to use more than 10% of its output.”

Experience from Denmark shows that more than this proportion causes the voltage and frequency of the supply to be unacceptably degraded. Wave and tidal power are in the early development stages.

The Scottish Government countered that Scotland has “60GW of renewable energy”, though it bases this on projections prepared for the previous Scottish Executive by consultants Garrad Hassan and Partners Limited in 2001 which have not subsequently been updated.

Professor Macleod called 60GW a “meaningless figure”.

“To say that we have 60GW of available renewable energy is meaningless because it doesn’t take account of the technical feasibility of delivering it as electricity and using it as electricity. This is what we mean about Scottish Government projections being completely divorced from reality.”

IESIS advocates a return to technocratic planning to avert what it sees as a looming “national emergency” over potential power shortages.

“The solution has to be engineering-led and based on proper technical analysis. It can’t just be looked at in bits. We need an overview of the whole situation. MSPs do not have the expertise, and we cannot leave it to the energy companies because their main motivation is to sell their products, while the risks to the public are fuel resource depletion and the huge risk of climate change.

IESIS’s comments drew support from Peter Hughes of Scottish Engineering, an established and outspoken critic of the Scottish Government’s energy stance: “IESIS’s findings support the findings of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and underline the need to have an open debate about the future of energy in Scotland, when we put the facts on the table and leave dogma at the door. Alex Salmond is talking through a hole in his hat about [tidal power] in the Pentland Firth making a significant contribution to the national grid. It won’t be able to do that until 2020 at the earliest, by which time it will be too late. At this rate, Salmond will not see the light until the lights go off.

“Miliband’s announcement leaves Scotland standing at the starting post, with all that implies for our engineering expertise in nuclear technology. I suspect Jim Mather knows [the anti-nuclear policy] is nonsense but a U-turn is politically impossible by now.”

A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: “Scotland’s vast renewables potential – hydro, onshore and offshore wind and emerging wave and tidal technologies – can generate up to 10 times peak electricity demand. Investment in renewable energy is driving Scotland’s economic recovery, with projects up and down the country supporting highly skilled, low-carbon jobs. We have already announced plans to take advantage of these unique strengths by creating at least 16,000 green energy related jobs in Scotland over the next decade.

“Scotland already generates a fifth of its electricity from renewables, reducing emissions and making a significant contribution to the Scottish economy. As part of a balanced energy mix, carbon capture and storage has the potential to cut emissions from fossil fuels.

“Jim Mather is more than happy to schedule a meeting with IESIS to hear more about their ideas.”