New wave of investment in Scotland's wind sector is needed, by Jeremy Grant

After only a week with their hands on the levers of government, Labour has been moving at a “move fast and break things” kind of pace on energy policy.

We’ve seen the establishment of a £7.3 billion National Wealth Fund (NWF) to support clean energy investments, reversal of a ban on onshore wind as part of a target to double this form of power generation by 2030, and plans to invest £500 million in green hydrogen.

Much of this had been in the party’s manifesto. But there have been some surprises too. Scottish climate and energy expert Chris Stark was – judging from one of his social media posts - blind-sided by being appointed to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. He heads a new unit that will bang heads together to ensure UK renewables policy is “supercharged”. Channelling Nasa vibes, it’s called “Mission Control”.

Clearly, having someone who was director of energy and climate change in the Scottish government will be helpful as work is done to accelerate grid upgrades, cut red tape and coordinate investment in port infrastructure for offshore wind. Especially in Scotland, where so much of the UK’s renewables story is playing out.

This work is urgent. As Wind Europe, an industry group for wind power, points out, five times more electricity infrastructure needs to be constructed by 2030 than in the past three decades to deliver a net zero grid. Some of this will come from ScotWind, one of the largest offshore wind projects in the world.   

Port infrastructure is key. You can’t build offshore wind farms at sea, so assembling the kit – turbine towers, blades, rotors and nacelles (which generate the electricity from the action of the rotor) must happen quayside. And this means acres of space, given that a blade can be longer than nine London double decker buses.

Ports are also where much of the supply chain manufacturing is most usefully located. Sumitomo Electric of Japan is building a £350m subsea cable factory at Port of Nigg at Cromarty Firth, while Vestas of Denmark is scoping Port of Leith for a turbine blade factory.

An innovative Scottish scheme called the Strategic Investment Model is busy trying to match prospective supply chain projects with ScotWind developers to kick-start more activity. Most of a list of 10 “priority” projects are port-related. Meetings between the two sides start in coming weeks to see if projects can attract the required investment commitments.

Labour has also allocated £1.8bn for port infrastructure, presumably part of the NWF’s £7.3bn. The idea is that this will “mobilise billions more in private investment” to allow more Scottish ports to accommodate the huge pipeline of offshore wind projects that’s coming.

This is where foreign direct investment (FDI) will come in. Scotland attracted more of this than anywhere in the UK outside London in 2023, according to a report by consultants EY. New projects secured increased by almost 29 per cent from the 2022 level.

Yet most of the increase came from one-off investments in ScotWind. Says Ally Scott, EY Scotland’s managing partner: “While welcoming the critical momentum Scotland has achieved in renewables FDI, we need to look beyond it to identify where the next wave of projects will come from.”