The Talking-up Scotland fund raiser closing on Friday, primarily to enable the recruitment of some research assistance, in order to take pressure off me [74 in June and tiring] and hopefully to further improve the blog, has made a good start. To contribute, only if you can (!) go to: Talking-up Scotland - a Politics crowdfunding project in Ayr by Professor John Robertson
By Professor John Robertson OBA, former Faculty Research Ethics Chair, UWS
Posted just after midnight, on January 29th 2025, and so in plenty of time for consideration and publication, but there was none, the Scottish Government has called for closer energy links with Europe:
The Scottish Government is calling for closer co-operation with Europe to help lower energy bills and boost investment.
Ahead of upcoming UK Government talks with the EU the Scottish Government has published a report, identifying a number of opportunities to more closely align with the European Union on energy matters.
These include:
- accelerating the adoption of more efficient UK-EU electricity trading arrangements to bring down energy costs for consumers
- linking the UK and EU Emissions Trading Schemes (ETS) to help reduce costs and barriers to trade
Estimates from the UK energy industry predict that unless the UK moves toward closer cooperation with the EU on energy and climate, it may lead to additional costs of up to £10billion in 2024-25, through higher energy bills and lower Treasury revenues.
The Scottish Government’s wants Scotland to be an EU member state, however the report published today sets out immediate actions which would rebuild closer collaboration with the EU on energy and climate matters and offset some of the damage caused by Brexit.
Acting Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Energy Gillian Martin said: “As we approach the fifth anniversary of Brexit, the costs to the people of Scotland are becoming ever clearer. https://www.gov.scot/publications/closer-energy-and-climate-cooperation-with-the-eu/
Support Scots Independent, Scotland’s oldest pro-independence newspaper [98!] and host of the OBA (Oliver Brown Award) at: https://scotsindependent.scot/FWShop/shop/
The Oliver Brown Award for advancing the cause of Scotland’s self respect, previously awarded to Dr Philippa Whitford, Alex Salmond and Sean Connery: https://scotsindependent.scot/?page_id=116
About Oliver Brown, the first Scottish National Party candidate to save his deposit in a Parliamentary election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Brow
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
It’s been a call SG have been making for years, but there’s not a hope in hell of Scots seeing anything to their advantage, it’s a regulatory stitch-up….
The ‘North Sea Link’ from Peterhead to Norway was one of the early examples – Look up North Sea Link on Wikipedia and you’ll land on the one which in an act of political chicanery gazumped the Peterhead interconnect to go to Blyth – Note the first line, “Not to be confused with Scotland-Norway interconnector” – The Peterhead project is here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorthConnect
The irony of that project having been gazumped is Norway is going through a bit of an energy crisis, and I’ll bet they regret falling for the Blyth scam now….
As slight aside, I was earlier watching a Youtube interview with Saul Griffith in Oz over what they’re doing in the land of solar downunder- They got the regulatory framework amended to allow community owned batteries to service a pop of ca 4,000, all feeding their solar in so they had 24/7 energy – No more individual batteries, no more nonsense of exporting individually to the grid then buying it back overnight at full whack. Topping up the battery in lean times comes from a wind farm – 2c (Oz) a kWh – As Saul beautifully summarised it, it’s put thousands in folks pockets rather than losing it to corporations, and the local community blossoms…
LikeLiked by 2 people