We, the general public, often bemoan the lack of high-quality politicians in Britain. We can’t be blamed for that. We are too often faced with a famine rather than a feast in that respect; too often faced with a Hobson’s choice when deciding who we want to lead. It is perhaps for that reason that, when we find a politician who is truly brilliant, we find it hard to let go.
For the 21st century, that politician is Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. There’s a reason why Sir Tony is Labour’s most electorally successful leader by a considerable distance, and that is because he has a near-unique ability to understand what the British population thinks and what the British population wants.
Now a septuagenarian, he’s at it again. In a new report on climate change and net zero policies, Sir Tony has in essence called for us to rip it up and start again. He argues that "though most people will accept that climate change is a reality caused by human activity, they're turning away from the politics of the issue because they believe the proposed solutions are not founded on good policy".
He has hit the nail on the head. Action on climate change has increasingly become the preserve of the wealthy, because the wealthy are the only people who are able to afford the largesse. Sir Tony goes further, tapping into a strong national undertone when he suggests that the “alarmist” debate on climate change is “riven with irrationality”.
We should pay close attention. Life comes with harsh realities, and the harsh reality of a journey to net zero is that individual people and families will only take the micro action required if it works for their wallet. For the overwhelming majority of normal people out there, cost comes first and climate comes second.
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Here in Scotland, we should be particularly attuned to this argument. There are relatively few countries in the world which have the assets to make a financially successful transition to net zero, but Scotland is one of them.
We have hit the energy jackpot twice. Geology has been incredibly kind to us. Half a century ago, it gave us oil and gas fields, and now it gives us one of the windiest climates in the world. We should be an exemplar of how to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy without impoverishing the population, and yet we appear to be determined to make a complete hash of it.
In essence, our mistake has been to tell people that net zero makes us nice, when we should have been spending our time telling people that net zero makes us rich. Of course, climate change is real, of course it is a global threat, and of course we need to arrest global warming, but until we are able to answer the question “what’s in it for me?”, we will not make significant progress.
We might get somewhere if we accept three foundational axioms.
The first is that the world will continue to grow. The IMF expects global growth to be 3.3% this year and next, and we can presume a similar level for many, many years to come. Furthermore, the UN predicts that the global population, currently sitting at 8.2 billion, will grow for another half century before peaking at well over 10 billion. This economic and population growth will require more energy. We can flap our gums all we like and bemoan this reality, but a reality it is, and one which cannot be wished away.
This then leads to the second axiom, which is that despite the strength of the renewable energy industry in Scotland and around the world, until we have developed a method of mass electricity storage, deployed at scale, all the planned renewable energy all over the world cannot meet our needs today, nor for some time to come. In Scotland, we currently have around 2GB of operational offshore wind capacity. It is likely to be at least 15 years before we have the 30-or-so GB which has been licensed as part of Scotwind. Pumped Storage Hydro (PSH) provides a similar tale; we have something like 300MW of it today, with a series of massive projects expected to send that number rocketing. But not yet.
The third axiom, then, is to accept that Scotland and Britain will need to continue to use fossil fuels for some considerable time to come. Our politicians, therefore, need to live by the word we constantly hear – transition. It is astonishing how many politicians talk about transition whilst in effect arguing for a much harsher cliff-edge, where we unilaterally decide to withdraw from oil and gas extraction despite not yet having the renewable capacity to fill the domestic gap.
It is in this that government policy really fails the sniff test. The person in the street would fairly ask: if we still need oil and gas, and we still have oil and gas, why don’t we use all our oil and gas instead of buying it from other countries? That is a flummoxing question for any politician to answer without utterly contorting themselves.
Accepting these axioms and exploiting our hydrocarbon jackpot will in turn help to accelerate the transition to our renewables jackpot. There are myriad foundational requirements, not currently in place, which are essential if we are to make the most of renewables.
Our current workers have outstanding transferable skills, but by the end of the next decade we will need a new workforce, and it is far from clear that we are providing today’s children with the requisite skills to thrive in tomorrow’s industry.
Moreover, and more starkly, we lack the quality roads, broadband, housing, social infrastructure and crucially grid connections which industry needs, in the very areas where the renewables industry will grow.
This will require some nous. It will require some mettle. And it will require Scotland’s two governments to work together better in this shared policy area. But it cannot be beyond the wit of a country with abundant old energy and abundant new energy to successfully transition between the two.
There is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; lower bills, more jobs, bigger exports. But we have to get to the end of the rainbow first.
Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters, and co-host of the Holyrood Sources podcast
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