AT Christmas I purchased the book Cruachan: The Hollow Mountain, by former Herald journalist Marian Pallister. As a young civil engineer I visited this construction site and went into that great cavern when it was being excavated. I was interested to see how this landmark Scottish pumped storage power station, built by the then statutory body, the South of Scotland Electricity Board, was now being viewed.
I now read that Cruachan pumped storage scheme, along with the two Scottish hydro stations on the Clyde, and the Galloway run of stations, have now been sold by Scottish Power (Iberdrola ) to an English company, Drax.
It operates the wood burning power station of that name that receives an annual subsidy of around £80 million for burning six million tons of imported wood chips. We in Scotland pay our proportionate share of that subsidy through the UK-wide subsidy levelisation process.
This all passes without any comment from the Scottish Government, perhaps because there is nothing it can do to stop such sell-offs.
We in Scotland should be outraged as we see ownership of Scottish asset after Scottish asset floating off furth of the country.
Last year it was the Kinlochleven and Lochaber hydro assets when the Fort William aluminium plant was sold for a handsome profit, the price enhanced by the £8m annual subsidy to the Kinlochleven station for its electricity generation output; an outrage for a hydro plant built over 110 years ago.
There is no mention of the price in the Cruachan transaction. Even here, Iberdrola will have received a bonus as Drax will now be in receipt of the subsidy ScottishPower was able to claim when Brian Wilson, then energy secretary, sanctioned the subsidy regime for hydro stations built before 2000.
One thing I am certain of is that, in an independent Scotland, a Scottish government will stop this Scottish asset sell-off nonsense. The time cannot come soon enough.
Nick Dekker,
1 Nairn Way,
Cumbernauld.
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