Alyn Smith: Energy crisis exposes the need for a Scottish National Grid

You would think that faced with the biggest cost of living crisis in more than a generation, those with an eye on holding the keys to the office of prime minister might actually want to propose something useful. Yet each candidate has fallen over themselves to propose ever more outlandish and cold-hearted policies, with tax cuts to the right and tax hikes to the left depending on which day of the week it is.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are just grunts watching on, with regular folks deeply worried about how they are going to manage and stuck in the middle of a Conservative catastrophe. Both candidates seem more obsessed with winning over their own base in a through the looking glass contest where everything is somehow rosy and we all just need to cheer up and work harder.

That neither Johnson’s successor nor Johnson himself seems bothered by the impending disaster tells you everything about where the Tory priorities lie. After doing everything possible to cling on to power,Mr Johnson’s justification for clinging on to power was so that the Government would be able to do things, to work for people. From his various sun loungers in various places, I’m not convinced he has done much at all. At least that means he has not done much bad I suppose.

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But there’s the rub – his Government has been asleep at the wheel as a cost of living crisis has grown beneath all our feet. Westminster has likewise sown the seeds of this bitter harvest. The Tory, Labour and LibDem parties, with only a wee bit of tinkering around the edges, have comprehensively bought into an economic consensus that rewards and incentivises short-termism in industry, asset-stripping in our public services, poverty wages and the gig economy.

Add this broken economic model to climate change, automation, the war in Ukraine and the legacy of Covid and the consequences for real people in the real world verifies that the UK isn’t working for itself, much less for Scotland.

Fundamental to all of this is energy, so it is all the more offensive that energy-rich Scotland is having to deal with an energy crisis created by Westminster mismanagement.

There is the immediate costs to domestic consumers, but it is wider than that. Businesses and indeed the public sector (imagine how much heating a school or hospital has increased by) are looking at insurmountable increases too. Hauliers do not know how they will afford the increased fuel costs without government intervention. This is significant for all of us because the UK is hugely reliant upon road haulage to move food and goods around, so knock on additional costs will hit us all. Pensioners do not know how they will heat their homes.

And as we face the prospect of rolling blackouts and the energy cap skyrocketing to perhaps £6000 per year come April, small businesses and public services have no idea how they will afford it.

That we are facing such a prospect is a damning indictment of the state of the Union. Scotland is blessed in plentiful resources and energy, yet it is the people of Scotland who face the higher energy costs.

Scotland is almost entirely self-sufficient in energy(and a massive exporter of electricity), yet because of the Union we face an energy crisis. Pooling and sharing indeed.

Independence remains the best option for Scotland, it is an opportunity to change the game.

Having the real solidarity within the EU structures(and budgets) and full control of domestic policy on energy security and food supply will give us the flexibility to react, adapt and also prepare for future crises. Yes many other countries are facing different aspects of the energy crisis, but on any objective reading of the numbers, I fail to see how we could deliver worse than the UK has for us.

However, while we work towards independence and the referendum, we need to get there. There are policies that can and should be implemented immediately. The UK energy market is clearly not fit for business and radical action needs to be taken now.

Firstly, there needs to be a proper package of support for households and businesses.

Without intervention, there will be bankruptcies and deaths. Simply providing £400 over a few months will not touch the sides, and failing to target it will result in those who don’t need support receiving a bung. We need to think bigger and if renationalisation of energy companies is needed, then so be it.

The figures involved for all of this are staggering but they will be even higher if nothing is done to bring down the energy burden.

Secondly, now is the time to seriously invest in renewables and energy-efficient infrastructure.

The UK has some of the oldest and leakiest housing stock in Europe which leads to more energy consumption to heat up homes. The high gas and oil prices demonstrate the folly of being reliant on fossil fuels when renewables are proven and reliable technology. Renewables could also offer local communities real energy autonomy(not just a wee pickle of community benefit), whilst building new houses and installing effective insulation in existing ones will help all of us bring down costs.

Thirdly, and to my mind one of the most radical but necessary policy interventions, we need a separate Scottish National Grid.

This is not possible under the current constitution, that’s why we need independence. That Scotland, an energy-rich country in every sense, is contemplating “heat banks” to keep old folks warm is grotesque failure, made in London.

A separate Scottish Grid will allow us to ensure equitable costs at home and incentivise our producers to gear up to export energy to a wider European continent that is crying out for it.

None of this will be easy. Short term, none of this will be cheap. But the time when all that could be done cheaply and easily has long since passed. We are in a crisis and only radical action can save people’s lives and livelihoods. With the Tories piloting the UK headlong into the abyss, it is ever more clear that Scotland’s independence in Europe is the lifeboat we need.