Rhoda Grant Blast Scottish Government As They Consider Energy Batteries For Beleaguered Islands

29th October 2020

In a galvanising speech in Holyrood in Wednesday 29 October, Highlands and Islands Labour MSP Rhoda Grant urged Scottish Government to place communities at the heart of its Renewable Energy plans and urgently improve energy networks to capitalise on Scotland's natural resources.

During a parliamentary debate on the future of energy in Scotland, Mrs Grant blasted the SNP Government for failing to secure jobs for Scotland's renewable energy sector and failing to encourage energy transmission from the islands.

She said: "We are home to some of the best renewable energy in the world, yet where are the jobs? BiFab workers in Fife and on Lewis are seeing their futures disappear, while multinational companies line their pockets from our natural resources. The actions of a Government should never lead to the decimation of an industry."

Mrs Grant said that communities should be supported in generation and transmission of energy from areas rich in natural resources, but that instead the lack of investment and support had led to a failing infrastructure and an industry on the brink of collapse.

Raising the recent failures of the power cable between Skye and Harris which has left the two largest islands in the Outer Hebrides reliant on fossil fuel stations for the foreseeable future, Mrs Grant said:"Because that connection is down, the renewable energy that is generated on the island cannot be distributed. That means that clean energy is going to waste while fossil fuels are being used to generate electricity. That has a knock-on impact for many of the small-scale community generators that feed into the system, because they no longer have a market for their clean energy.

Mrs Grant continued: “For many years, I have been pushing for an interconnector to those islands, which would have distributed energy, had it been built. The campaign will go on, while a new cable is laid to replace the damaged cable. That just shows just how disorganised our system is. Surely the replacement cable should provide additional capacity, and surely there should have been a better back-up than a diesel-powered station from the last century—yet that is what serves us."

In response to her speech, Minister for Energy, Connectivity and the Islands, Paul Wheelhouse said that the Scottish Government would investigate the potential for batteries to be installed to allow some of the renewable capacity being generated within island communities to be used as an alternative to the fossil fuel power station.