Former Labour energy minister Brian Wilson has urged Scotland's manufacturing firms not to miss out on the £2 billion windfall of pumped hydro storage.
Wilson, who has been long-standing advocate for renewables in Scotland, said: "We were promised a second industrial revolution through renewable energy and none of that has happened because developers have been allowed to import virtually all of the hardware instead of investing in Scotland.''
"Current pumped storage hydro proposals are on a scale which offer a real second chance for the Scottish manufacturing industry. Now is the time to identify where the capacity exists and to ensure that the progress of these projects through the consenting process is matched by assurances of using a domestic supply chain."
Wilson, a former UK Energy Minister and is an adviser to the UK Government’s Board of Trade, is a policy adviser to the ILI Group, chaired by former Glasgow Lord Provost Michael Kelly. He was speaking at a conference in Glasgow.
Last month troubled Scottish fabrication firm BiFab was effectively ‘locked out’ of the biding process for a £200 million offshore wind farm in Moray, unable to compete with foreign state-backed competitors from Spain, UAE and Belgium. The Scottish Government took a £25 million equity stake last year in Bifab as part of a rescue agreement.
Speaking on the eve of All-Energy Conference Mark Wilson, ILI Group chief executive officer said: “We have been in the renewable industry for the last 10 years and have seen time and time again, Scottish firms missing out on the construction investment. Scotland is uniquely placed to benefit from renewable energy, but Scottish firms have mostly missed out on the potential.
“We are taking forward three pumped storage hydro sites in Scotland with total build cost of over £2 billion, creating thousands of jobs, we are determined to do everything in our power to make sure Scottish firms are in the best position possible to benefit from this investment,” said Mark Wilson, addressing the ‘Case for Pumped Storage Hydro’.
Pumped Storage Hydro allows the Grid to store energy that cannot be absorbed naturally by consumers during times of peak wind or solar generation. It does this by using this energy to pump water from a lower reservoir to a top reservoir. Here the water can be held until times of demand where it is released to the lower reservoir through turbines generating electricity like a conventional hydro plant, this process can be repeated as required.
ILI Group have over 2GW of Pump-storage Hydro in the pipeline with their first 450MW development Red John in Inverness currently in planning, with two more projects to be submitted in the coming months.
