SSE/PAWith the commissioning of Britain’s most productive onshore wind farm, electricity will flow from the Shetland Islands to the British mainland for the first time.
SSE says its 103-turbine project, known as Viking, can generate 443 megawatts (MW) of electricity, enough to power nearly 500,000 homes.
The Shetland Islands are the windiest region in the UK, meaning it is rare for the turbines to not be running.
Chief executive Alistair Phillips-Davies told BBC News that a “significant acceleration” of renewable energy infrastructure is now urgently needed if the UK is to meet its climate targets.
“We need to do a lot more of these projects, including a lot more offshore wind projects, to make sure we can decarbonise the energy system,” he said.
But critics of the wind farms – and the pylons needed to transmit the electricity they generate – say a new era of mass industrialisation for private profit will ruin large parts of the British countryside.
SSE has built a 257-kilometre submarine cable to transport electricity from Viking to Noss Head near Wick on the Scottish mainland.
The company said it had invested more than £1 billion in the wind farm and cable projects and planned to invest a further £20 billion in renewable energy by the end of the decade.
According to Phillips-Davies, this would be “the largest construction project we have seen since the Second World War”.
“The Shetland Islands have great wind resources. This is the first of the really large wind farms that could be built here. There will be more projects to come,” he said.
“Crucial” to ending dependence on fossil fuels
British Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said Viking was making a “critical contribution” to reducing Britain’s dependence on “volatile fossil fuel markets, strengthening our energy independence and protecting consumers”.
The Labour government has set itself the goal of generating all of Britain’s electricity from renewable energy by 2030 and gradually phasing out gas-fired power stations.
Ministers have promised to accelerate the development of wind, hydrogen and carbon capture projects by investing £8.3 billion over five years in a state-owned energy company called Great British Energy.
The Conservatives had previously stated that GB Energy was a “financial black hole” that was channeling taxpayers’ money into “de-risking multi-million pound energy companies”.
Miliband also claims that the Viking project will ensure that “hundreds of thousands of homes in Shetland and across the country will benefit from cheap, domestic energy”, but this is an issue that is hotly contested on the archipelago.
Moraig Lyall, chairman of Shetland Islands Council’s environment and transport committee, said annual household bills on the islands were often double the UK average of £1,700 and there was no sign of them coming down as a result of hosting Viking.
“When people look out the window today, they see all these turbines generating lots of energy, but they don’t realise the benefit they get from it.
“They are still sitting in their houses and having to decide whether they can afford to turn on their heating. People are rightly upset about that,” she said, adding that islanders were also concerned about Viking’s impact on the landscape, the peat bog environment on which it is built and tourism.
There are also concerns on the mainland, with some communities protesting against plans by SSE and others to erect large electricity pylons to carry power from new renewable energy projects to towns and cities across Scotland, England and Wales.
“Someone needs to police the line between net zero ideology and unbridled commercial opportunism,” said Kate Matthews of Save Our Mearns, a group campaigning against SSE’s plans to build 60-70km of new electricity pylons from Kintore in Aberdeenshire to Tealing in Angus.
“Angus and Aberdeenshire are looking at 10 to 20 years of industrialisation, so constant building, constant applications, thousands of hectares of battery storage, thousands of hectares of solar turbine hydrogen plants,” Ms Matthews said.
“We will pay the price for generations to come. It will be unrecognizable,” she added.
Ms Matthews said “the rest of the UK doesn’t know what’s coming” with plans for new electricity pylons in Essex, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, the Lake District, parts of Wales and elsewhere.
Ministers have also pledged to reform planning law to make it easier and quicker to approve large projects.
SSE’s Mr Phillips-Davies said this was crucial, pointing out that it had taken Viking 20 years from inception to having a blade ready for use, 16 of which were on paper.
He calls on the British and Scottish governments to streamline and speed up their planning processes so that projects can be approved or rejected within 12 months.
He points out that Berwick Bank in the outer Firth of Forth, the world’s largest offshore wind farm, has been awaiting approval from the Scottish Government for almost two years.
Renewable energy companies are not the only ones concerned about the pace of the transition from fossil fuels to more environmentally friendly energy sources.
In Aberdeen, home of Britain’s oil and gas industry, there are concerns that the British government is putting jobs at risk.
“This sector already pays three times as much tax as the economy as a whole,” says David Whitehouse of the industry association Offshore Energies UK (formerly Oil & Gas UK).
Producers currently pay a tax rate of 78 percent, including a special tax introduced after oil prices soared following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Whitehouse said he was also concerned about the abolition of tax relief for investments.
He warns of a possible “investment freeze” which, in his opinion, could have consequences for thousands of jobs and impact “precisely the supply chain that we need to achieve a successful, self-sustained energy transition”.
“We are seeing resources, key equipment, rigs and personnel leaving the basin,” agrees Steve Bowyer, North Sea general manager of oil and gas producer EnQuest.
“We really want to grow in the UK, but we need the right tax conditions to drive that growth,” he adds.
Mr Bowyer says his company will be “watching very closely” what Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves does in her autumn budget and how she works with industry “over the next six to 12 months” as she considers where to invest in the future.
“There is a risk of causing irreparable damage to the industry and the UK economy unless there is appropriate commitment, cooperation and action to introduce an appropriate tax system,” he added.
The government insists it will secure jobs in the North Sea for decades to come while ensuring a smooth transition to renewable energy.
What is clear, however, is that the ministers are under pressure and critical scrutiny from both the oil industry and the renewable energy sector.
The transition to ecology also brings challenges.
