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Yesterday, the Scottish Government published new statistics on renewable energy generation up to the end of 2017.
The figures show a significant increase in output during the final three months of last year – with 2017 now the best year on record for renewables in Scotland.
With positive economic news not always that easy to find in recent times, these numbers are clearly welcome.
There is an added benefit. Next week’s GDP numbers for Q4 2017 will include this increase in electricity generation. So the numbers should provide a significant boost to the production sector of the economy, potentially lifting the overall quarterly growth figures substantially.
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Grant Allan and Eleanor Malloy
Fraser of Allander Institute
Are oil and gas firms seeing opportunities in renewables? In this blog, we examine the responses from our latest Oil and Gas Survey, produced along with Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce.
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Grant Allan, Department of Economics and Deputy Director Fraser of Allander Institute, University of Strathclyde
It was central to 2010’s “Low carbon economic strategy for Scotland” that there could be economic opportunities in decarbonising the Scottish economy: “jobs in the low carbon sector in Scotland could… rise to 130,000, over 5% of the Scottish workforce”. The slightly later “2020 Routemap for Renewable Energy in Scotland” justified ambitious energy targets – for instance, the equivalent of 100% of Scottish electricity demand to be produced from renewables in Scotland – as “necessary to reindustrialise Scotland through 21st century technologies and seize the opportunities to create tens of thousands of new jobs and secure billions of pounds of investment in our economy”. Five years later, it is an opportune time to reflect on what we can conclude about the economic successes of low carbon and renewable energy policy in Scotland.
So are we on track to secure a jobs revolution?Continue reading
Grant Allan, Department of Economics and Fraser of Allander Institute
The Scotland energy system is currently in the process of an unprecedented restructuring. The implications of the UK’s Brexit vote for these changes over both the short and long term are critical to the future shape of Scotland’s energy mix.
This matters for three reasons: first, energy policies have implications for the price of energy faced by households and firms; second, the Scottish government have identified the “transition to a low carbon economy” as an area which can deliver economic (as well as environmental) benefits in the short and medium term; third, Scotland has environmental (domestically-set) targets, paramount to which is reducing the carbon intensity of energy production and use.
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