HITACHI Energy has just opened its Glasgow-based Scottish headquarters, signalling a huge investment into the country's energy network.
It has been backed by £1.7 million worth of grant funding from Scottish Enterprise, with a total investment of £3m into the city centre site.
Ahead of the launch event, eight floors up in the company's new Queen Street office, I sat with UK and Ireland managing director Laura Fleming in a board room towering over much of central Glasgow to find out why Glasgow, and Scotland, was the top choice.
It's a mix of both history and modernity, Fleming said, with Scotland having "a really long and a deep heritage around engineering [and] around innovation", while also being "the centre of renewable energy in the UK".
Proximity to skilled expertise – whether it's staff coming from the Clydeside shipyards, the North Sea, and plants like Mossmorran or Grangemouth, or graduates and apprentices coming from Scotland's broad mix of colleges and universities – was one of the biggest attractions, she told me.
"Those two factors combined make an excellent place for Hitachi to establish the ... office in the centre of Glasgow, to be able to pull on the excellent people coming out of universities, the excellent people that already exist in the industry, not only in the energy industry in terms of the electricity side, but also people coming out of the oil and gas industry, for example, and to continue building on that heritage. That would be the key part".
"To be honest, it's a little bit of everything," she added.
"You need a mix of teams, you need a mix of experienced people in order to be able to then bring in the non‑experienced graduates.
"So what we have done over the last couple of years is really to up‑level the level of experience that we have inside the company so that we can actually also open up the doors for graduates coming out of the universities, be that Strathclyde, Glasgow, Heriot‑Watt and Edinburgh, for example. There are many different options that we have here."
But it's also about "working closely with some of our main customers", Fleming added, explaining that because so many projects are being planned across Scotland, the company wants to be close to where it can have the most impact.
"We want the teams to be close together so they can continue to collaborate and innovate in the way that they have done already over the last few years.
"So that makes that location, or this location in particular, really, really special."
Speaking on what needs to change to ensure projects can get underway smoothly, she told me that "investor confidence is really critical."
"One of the things that is creating uncertainty is really the delays around planning, for example, so really getting the permits in and really making sure that those projects are secured and will definitely be built out."
"I can see both Scottish and UK governments are doing a lot in order to streamline the planning processes, which is really good, but there are still delays, right? There are still huge delays. So that would be one key issue."
On the project side, she explained that Hitachi works through "the entire life cycle of an electron", from the moment it's generated, to storage, and to direct supply.
"It's really important that the grid is central to it, to ensure that the power that is generated at source can be delivered safely, reliably and sustainably to the end customer".
One of the largest strains that could hit the Scottish energy system in coming years is demand from AI data centres. Across Scotland there is more than 6.2GW worth of projects in various planning stages, more than Scotland's current peak energy demand of around 4GW.
If data centres are going to be developed in Scotland, attention needs to be paid not only to ensuring there is enough generation, but also that the grid has been modernised to handle the capacity.
"They have to, yes. They really have to keep in tandem," she added.
The opening event on Wednesday came just after it was announced that the energy price cap would rise by 13%, hitting consumers pockets with bills up to £18 a month higher.
Fleming said that the pressures coming from the war in Iran make it clear that the transition to renewables needs to accelerate.
She explained: "I think it's been quite well documented – why the energy price cap is going up again is because the price of gas went up a lot because of the Iran war, right?
"We still see a lot of fluctuation around that. What increased renewable generation for the UK and for Scotland will do is actually cut off that dependency not only on oil and gas but also on foreign markets setting the prices.
"So continuing that investment in renewables and home‑grown energy generation, together with the development of the grid, not only for the sake of developing the grid but particularly the grid that we need for the future, will absolutely start to drive prices down, and what it will do is make us less vulnerable to those shocks that are instigated on a global level rather than on a local level."
