SCOTLAND has opted to go green and tomorrow we put our money where our mouths are – or at least our windmills. The UK Government's Energy Security Strategy is expected to include 7,000 wind turbines to be fast-tracked, mostly north of the Border. We're told this is because it takes around 10 years to get a wind farm through the English planing system, whereas Scotland waves them through. All of which is good news for the planet, if not necessarily for the folk living under them.

In truth, there is no route to net zero that doesn't involve more onshore wind, so get used to it. Some environmental groups and ornithologists complain about the ecological damage done by covering the Scottish hills with windmills. Scottish tourist organisations hate them for obvious reasons. However, they are at least cheap and quick to erect and don't leave toxic waste lying around for thousands of years.

It’s good news for the Green Lairds who own most of Scotland and already make a packet from carbon offsetting (look it up). Not just the earls of this and the dukes of that, but the billionaires and corporates currently jostling to buy up Scottish estates. They can make millions annually by devoting a couple of acres to wind farms. 7:84 should be writing a new play: The Cheviot, the Stag and the White, White Turbine.

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The Scottish Government doesn't want to upset the landlord ecosystem by calling for a windmill windfall tax. But it could be worse. The deal tomorrow appears to be that Scotland gets more onshore wind, which the Scottish Government supports, while England gets more nuclear power, which the Scottish Government opposes. Not just new Sizewells, but up to 16 “Boris Box” modular nukes to be built in England to ensure 25 per cent of UK energy is nuclear by 2040. Well, good luck with that. English Tory MPs have revolted at the prospect of wind turbines in England's green and pleasant land; just wait till they’re told about mini Chernobyls in the Home Counties.

Boris Johnson has been ridiculed for demanding a “colossal" floating offshore wind farm to be built within a year. Ha, ha, clown. Yet, this is not as daft as it sounds. Britain managed to develop a vaccine in one year that normally takes a decade, so why not offshore wind? The technology is there and there are no planning constraints. If the alternative is to keep importing oil and gas from authoritarians like Saudi Arabia, why wait?

Floating wind farms are the next Big Thing in renewable energy. The world's first commercial one is bobbing about in the North Sea off the coast of Peterhead. It is operated by Hywind, and backed, inevitably, by Equinor, the Norwegian state oil company. Floating wind farms can be constructed on land and towed out to sea, thus avoiding the immense cost of erecting wind turbines on site in the ocean. They can also be deployed in deep water, like the Irish Sea, unlike fixed platforms which need shallow waters.

Now, if only Scotland had deep-water facilities ready-made to build these things. Didn’t Scottish yards build the mega structures that sucked the oil out of the North Sea? The Ninian Central Platform, built at Loch Kishorn in 1978, was the largest movable man-made structure ever constructed. But perhaps not this time. Wind turbines are now mostly manufactured in south-east Asia and dragged here by tug. The Scottish Government saw the offshore wind boom coming 10 years ago, and decided to do next to nothing about it – except taking over our only platform engineering company, BiFab, just long enough for it to go bust.

The greening of the planet should be fantastic news for the Scottish economy. With 25% of Europe's offshore wind we've struck energy gold twice in a generation. And that's not all. This week's apocalyptic IPCC report on the climate emergency, warning of floods, fire, extinction and more, had one sliver of comfort. It said that the technology exists to scrub CO2 out of the atmosphere and called for a rapid development of carbon capture and storage, CCS. Indeed, the panel said that holding global warming to 1.5 degrees would be impossible without it.

We have depleted oil wells in the North Sea that are ideal for storing CO2. We have the network of oil pipelines to send it there and all carbon capture technical skills. This could be the oil boom in reverse; an opportunity for Scotland to make amends for polluting the atmosphere by putting greenhouse gasses back in the earth where they belong. Only problem? We seem to have missed out on CCS as well.

Funding for the first round of commercial carbon capture in the UK is going to Humberside. The Scottish Government claimed to be furious at this snub to the Acorn CCS project at St Fergus, but it was hardly surprising. The Scottish Greens oppose carbon capture and they are in the Scottish Government. Acorn, backed by Shell, involves the building of a new power station at Peterhead, which would probably have seen Patrick Harvie supergluing himself to the bulldozers.

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It would take incompetence of heroic proportions for Scotland to lose out entirely on the renewable energy revolution. But we’re giving it our best shot. Like North Sea oil before it, renewable wealth is going over Scottish heads to international corporations and billionaires. Nicola Sturgeon reneged on promises to set up a state-owned national energy company. Mind you, given the fate of the Scottish Government's other nationalised ventures, like Ferguson Marine, perhaps that's a blessing in disguise.

Oh, and don't expect in any reduction in Scottish fuel bills. We still rely on oil and gas for up to 60% of our energy needs and the price of that is rocketing. We increasingly import it from overseas from repellent regimes like Saudi Arabia and Russia, vastly increasing our carbon footprint in the process. But the Scottish Government has ruled out using our existing North Sea oil and gas to substitute for imported energy. Vladimir Putin will be deciding whether granny can keep her house warm this winter.

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