Just stopping oil will also stop Scotland's renewables future

There was a spirit of optimism and hope about the land and not just due to the heroic efforts, albeit ultimate failure, of the national football team at the World Cup in Germany. Oil and gas had been discovered, even if the scale and value were hidden from us. Lives and homes were being transformed as central heating became the norm. Jobs were being created and businesses being set up as the offshore sector grew and an onshore supply chain developed.

There was growing self-confidence and not just on the “fitba” park. “Scotland could do so much better than this,” was the prevailing view and the question being asked was where was our share of this new wealth? Stark political posters showing poor Scots, young and old, demanded that Scottish oil should be their wealth, too. “It’s their oil” resonated with the electorate and there was a political surge for independence.

But it wasn’t to be. The wealth that now exists in the Norwegian oil fund, providing for future generations, isn’t there for Scots to come any more than its benefits were for past generations. As Jim Sillars so eloquently put it: “Some nations discovered oil and made the desert bloom. Scotland discovered oil and saw parts of it made into industrial deserts.”

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The standard of living in Norway is something Scots can only look at and envy: this country’s wealth taken and used to smash the unions by Thatcher and then to wage illegal wars by Blair. Meanwhile, poverty rates soar and those black and white posters from the 1970s, of gaunt children and pensioners, are the reality in many parts today.

So, what’s to be done? We can wallow in our misery and after last Sunday’s football result many understandably are grieving. More productively though, as all those years ago, we can make the case that it doesn’t need to be this way and that we can change it. Many Scots are poor – the statistics are stark and brutal – but Scotland’s not a poor land. The political case, now as then, is that there’s a perversity in an energy-rich Scotland seeing so many Scots not just fuel poor but in dire poverty.

While we can’t get back the wealth that’s been taken, we can still access what remains and it’s considerable, believe you me. Scotland’s people must share in her wealth in the in the third decade of the new millennium, as they should have since the late decades of the last. It can transform not just lives but our economy and our society. It’s the bedrock for a just transition to renewables.

Our geography and weather, so often an impediment or even a curse, are now to our great advantage. The winds we’ve moaned about throughout our history now provide the opportunity for renewable energy with turbines on and off our shores.

(Image: Just Stop Oil)

Added to that there’s what already exists with hydro and can be further developed and added to with wave and tidal. Believe me they will come. Some said floating offshore was impossible but new technology is being developed.

Our huge coastline offers further opportunities and that’s even without the solar panels being planned between onshore turbines and even floating in our lochs being investigated.

There’s no reason that Scotland shouldn’t be capable of matching Norway and delivering the social transformation seen there and in other lands. But to achieve that full potential and more importantly to harness that bounty for the benefit of our people requires political action.

There cannot be prevarication on the continued need for oil, its extraction and refining. The climate crisis is undeniable. But there requires to be a transition. Not only must it be just for those who have contributed so much but it’s required as fossil fuels are essential to that journey.

The plastics and key components of machinery for the renewable revolution depend upon it. Just stopping oil stops renewables and impedes the change we require to make. So, oil needs to continue, and it must benefit Scotland. To mitigate the harm, it should be linked to carbon capture and storage along with green hydrogen production. Both of which again offer huge opportunities for Scotland through location and geology.

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Hostility and prevarication are damaging and the hypocrisy is noted by Scots and not just those in the north-east. Extend, Invest, Transition is the slogan for the Save Grangemouth Refinery campaign, but it applies across our land. A new world can be reached but to get there we need to sustain what we’ve got – not just the product but those who produce it.

Skills are vital for turbines or other energy machinery wherever sited. But as Sharon Graham of Unite has said, we can’t do to the North Sea what we did to the pits. Close the rigs down or shut the refinery and the workers will be on their bikes south or handed an air ticket to the Middle East.

That’s why in this election and in its aftermath the case for independence is encapsulated in an energy-rich land with fuel-poor Scots. The tragedy for many is not just how bad things are but how much better they should be.

It’s not just on the fitba park that we’ve underperformed. In the 1970s, folk could see the oil wealth gushing ashore but weren’t benefiting. Now it’s turbines turning on their hills and off their shores while they can’t heat their homes. It’s Scotland’s energy and it must be Scots’ wealth.