A MINISTERIAL summit is to be held tomorrow (Thursday) following concerns over what union chiefs describe as a "renewables scandal” which has increasingly placing Scotland’s green energy revolution in the hands of overseas firms, the Herald can reveal.
Trades unions, senior officials from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, offshore wind developers and supply chain companies are to attend the crunch meeting which is expected to look at the awarding of contracts for offshore wind projects.
And ahead of the meeting, union leaders have said the scandal of losing wind contracts and manufacturing jobs to the rest of the world must stop.
It has emerged as union chiefs raised hopes government intervention over the future of the beleaguered South Korean-owned CS Wind factory near Campbeltown in Argyll, the UK's only facility for manufacturing wind towers following a meeting in December with ministers.
READ MORE: Scotland left with 'scraps off table' in £2bn wind farm boom
More than 30 are to attend the two-hour offshore wind supply summit at the Hilton Edinburgh Carlton in Edinburgh which will be chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy and Fair, Derek Mackay.
The Scottish Government has had to shift the event from the Scottish Enterprise's Apex House headquarters due to the numbers wanting to attend.
It will include a fifty minute group discussion led by the energy, connectivity and islands minister Paul Wheelhouse.
It comes after Unite, one of the country’s biggest unions, called for steps to regain control of the sector earlier this month because of a “smorgasbord” of multinational interests now “calling the shots” in the wind farms sector in Scotland.
In November, the Herald revealed how Scotland had missed out on hundreds of millions of pounds of work in the creation of one of the country’s biggest offshore wind farms, the £2 billion Neart Na Gaoithe (NnG), to overseas firms.
Unions have criticised what they saw as “the scraps off the table” that Scotland has received in that project .
Canadian-owned Burntisland Fabrications (BiFab), which builds large-scale equipment for the offshore oil and gas industry, platforms for offshore wind turbines and has yards in Arnish and Fife lost out on a 'lifeline" contract to build steel foundations jackets for the NnG-project run by French state energy giant EDF.
READ MORE: Why it is feared Scotland's wind power economic boom is hot air
It is proposed just around eight of 54 of the jackets which anchor the turbines to the seabed will be built in Scotland with the rest being constructed in south east Asia.
Scotland lost other important NnG project work, worth hundreds of millions of pounds to England, Germany, Finland and France.
And union leaders met the finance secretary Derek Mackay last month following concerns that the first 22 jobs at the beleaguered South Korean-owned CS Wind factory near Campbeltown in Argyll have gone – with threats to a further 51 out of a workforce of 94.
READ MORE: First Minister intervention plea as jobs go at CS Wind
In 2010, a Scottish Government report stated the offshore wind sector alone offered the potential for 28,000 direct jobs and a further 20,000 jobs in related industries, as well as £7.1bn investment in Scotland by 2020.
The Scottish Government is also aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75% over the next 10 years as Scotland bids to become “net-zero” by 2045.
The summit comes eight months after Mr Mackay and Mr Wheelhouse led previous crunch discussion to take urgent action to ensure more Scottish companies benefit from the awarding of contracts for offshore wind projects.
Pat Rafferty, Unite Scottish secretary said: “We welcome the opportunity to meet with Scottish Government ministers and key stakeholders in the follow-up energy summit.
"Unite has been pushing for this meeting so that we can focus minds to ensure that Scotland benefits from contracts in the pipeline.
"There remains a great deal of uncertainty and insecurity in the renewables sector including over the futures of both CS Wind and BiFab. We are clear that nowhere near enough has been done to support local and regional supply chains as we have watched billions of pounds worth of contracts being offshored to Asia and the Far East.
"It’s Unite’s hope that the meeting will be a major step forward in setting clear action points about what must be done to secure jobs and a sustainable manufacturing footprint in the sector.”
It emerged in November that the Scottish Government’s economic and community development agency, Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), moved four years ago to offload the taxpayer’s 19 per cent stake in Argyll firm Wind Towers (Scotland) – which owns the UK’s only facility for manufacturing wind towers – to South Korean-based CS Wind, which took over operations. CS Wind papers seen by The Herald showed that a £461,920 taxpayer-funded loan from HIE was also waived.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “The Scottish Government is determined to maximise the economic opportunity for the Scottish supply chain from our offshore wind potential and will use every lever at our disposal to ensure that our supply chain benefits from these projects.
“We continue to champion the strengths, and potential, of our indigenous supply chain. But it is now time for the offshore sector to do more by awarding contracts to our supply chain.
“If the ambitions of the offshore sector deal are to be realised, the industry must continue to look for opportunities to support the Scottish and UK supply chain.
"We’re hosting an offshore wind summit in Edinburgh to bring those groups around the table, and expect to announce the introduction of measures that will ensure more jobs are created and retained in Scotland."
"And we welcome the recent launch of the sector deal’s £100 million Offshore Wind Growth Partnership, which can help strengthen our supply chain considerably.
"Its first activity will be to conduct an in-depth assessment of the offshore wind foundations sector – including floating wind substructures, where Scotland is known to have huge potential.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel