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Professor John Robertson OBA

As energy price rises loom, a reminder of why Scots would pay far less once independent. From stewartb in June 2025:

I fear that a majority of the electorate in Scotland still have NO IDEA of – (perhaps even conditioned to have no interest in?) – Scotland’s indigenous energy assets and their potential significance for their own lives and those of their children and grandchildren. Little or no awareness of the scale of value of offshore oil & gas assets in the recent past (and still remaining) – Scotland’s great missed opportunity of a generation – and the developing renewable electricity generation assets, their current and realisable potential value – the about to be great missed opportunity of another generation!

And NO IDEA how they and the young folk in their families would benefit from a Scotland having a government with the agency available to – and considered normal and essential in – independent nation-states like Norway and Denmark.

When it comes to energy, the opportunity costs of our present constitutional status are huge!

When marking the coming on stream of the Moray West offshore wind farm in April 2024 – a site with the capacity to generate (just) 882 MW of electricity – Ian Murray MP, Secretary of State for Scotland said: ‘.. Ocean Winds’ Moray West offshore wind farm – which will power 1.3 million homes – half the homes in Scotland’.

Source: https://www.offshorewindscotland.org.uk/news/2025/april/24/moray-west-becomes-fully-operational/

That’s from just one moderately sized offshore wind farm! amongst many operational and in the pipeline.

On the Western Link electricity transmission cable running from Hunterston to the England/Wales border, National Grid has stated: ‘Operational since 2017, the link supported over 450 jobs during planning and development and has transmitted over 30,000GWh of electricity during its first five years of operation – enough to power all the homes in Wales for the same period.’ Now that is a ‘fact’ that won’t get mainstream media coverage!

There are five additional offshore transmission cables of comparable capacity – Eastern Green Links 1 to 5 – under construction, in development or at the planning stage designed to exploit electricity generated by wind offshore Scotland. Each will have the capacity to transport 2 GW of electricity from Scotland: each will have the capacity to power c.2 million homes. Take Mr Murray’s statement: do the sums!

And whilst these energy transfers may be termed ‘exports’, they have none of the usual economic and fiscal benefits that come to an independent nation-state engaged in exporting something of value e.g. earning foreign currency and gaining the confidence of the International financial markets based on balance of trade factors.