Shanks shills for Big Energy and shafts Scotland
Published in the October 22nd edition of The Herald, in the Scotsman and The Edinburgh Evening News, October 23rd.
Listening to UK energy minister Michael Shanks on Laura Maciver’s BBC Scotland Sunday Show was painful. The former secondary school teacher is in way over his head.
He absurdly claimed that GB Energy would generate electricity early next year and that it will bring down energy bills. False. GB Energy is shell company for foreign investors to exploit and profit from Scotland’s renewables. It won’t create any jobs or revenue for Scotland, nor will it produce a milliwatt of energy or lower bills.
To illustrate how dysfunctional the UK energy system is, since English Labour came to power, more than £100m has been added to UK energy bills to pay Scottish wind farms to halt production.
The reason? It’s expensive to move electricity from where it’s produced to where it’s needed and under the existing centralised market structure, if an offshore Scottish wind farm produces more than the network can handle, it’s paid to shut off while a gas-fired plant down in England gets paid to switch on. That’s crazy. It’s estimated that this market failure will cost £3.7bn by 2030.
The solution? Regional energy pricing. Instead of one price for the whole UK, each region would have a different price based on its level of supply and demand. Consumers would pay less for electricity if the power is generated near them and more if the power is generated further away. Because Scotland has renewables coming out of its ears, regional pricing would be a huge benefit and Scots would pay the lowest electricity prices in Europe.
In addition, regional pricing would boost the Scottish economy (another reason Westminster won’t allow it). When Sweden introduced regional pricing, it attracted more than 70bn euros of industrial investment. Because energy intensive industries want the cheapest energy sources, they’d flock to Scotland if we had regional pricing, generating lots of jobs in their wake.
Another thing Sweden has that the UK no longer does is a state-owned energy company.
But Sir Keir won’t re-nationalise energy, preferring it to remain in the hands of multinational energy giants and foreign governments.
If Scots are sick and tired of the UK plundering their resources and then lying about it, the only solution is to end the failing union.
It is amazing how economically illiterate some of the Labour representatives are.
Michael Shanks appears to be a spokesperson for and industry he knows nothing about and appears to think that he can just make meaningless promices which are unrelated to the real world.
Yes, Scotland held within the UK 'union' colonial hoax suffers from the highest electricity prices in Europe, four times higher than Norway, and the highest among all the oil rich nations of the world.
Very soon we will see £100 billion worth of renewable energy stolen from Scotland every year. This after the 50 years theft of our oil and gas.
An independent Scotland would easily be able to provide free or close to free electricity to Scots and to Scottish industry, making us one of the most competitive countries in Europe. The UK colonial hoax prevents this, much as it prevented our economic and social development from oil and gas production.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2024/04/18/the-realities-of-an-energy-rich-scotland-plundered-under-colonial-rule/