(updated below on 17th December) … where is the infrastructure – the investment in the infrastructure?Without this, the power of our offshore wind and tidal energy cannot be harnessed and distributed.

We’re looking at the familiar post-Victorian UK inability to invest in the future. We’ve become habituated to being a nation of fast-buckaneers.

Scotland has spent £500million over the past 6 years in establishing centres of excellence in different aspects of renewable energy research at each of Scotland’s leading Universities.

This was a significant investment – before the banking collapse of this time last year – the most inflationary incident in history – taught us all overnight to regard millions as small change and to think only in billions.

However, while this spread keeps the Universities in tune – and boy can they articulate protest when their respective power positions are threatened – it would have been and would still be, more powerfully developmental to centralise all research into all forms of renewable energy.

This would not only produce economies of scale in resources but would create rich opportunities for casual as well as formal intellectual cross-fertilisation.

In the green-field or green-sea situation we’re in with renewables, this sort of pollenation of ideas is vital if we are to propel Scotland to the international leadership in the field that is within its grasp. The odd academic conference doesn’t cut it in comparison to the daily chat over the coffee that began the Internet.

However the big issue is the investment to start creating the infrastructure to carry renewable power generated offshore into a North Sea Grid.

The Scottish Government has been and remains a passionate advocate of such a gri. It is certain that the First Minister, Alex Salmond, will press this case in his visit to Copenhagen today.

The facts are that, while this project is expensive, it is future-proofing and it is relatively risk free because the technology for sub-sea interconnection is proven. At the moment there is a connection between Northern Ireland and Scotland and one between England and France.

A North Sea Grid would see a Scottish east coast network drawing power from offshore north coast installations and connecting to a hub managing two-way power traffic also with Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland and Norway.

The Ireland link would of course require a spur to the grid, creating a point of connection for power generated on Scotland’s west coast.

Scotland is estimated as having 30-60GW of potential and reliable offshore renewable energy. This represents – at whatever level it came in at – a significant contribution to the 65GW peak power call of the entire UK.

The UK National Grid was designed for another time where power came in huge volumes from few and known sources – like Shetland. This meant that it has few connections capable of carrying serious power. Outside these, the grid was designed more for the delivery of local need which, in much of Scotland, was to small populations with consequently very small needs.

Today, with Scotland capable of generating on and offshore wind and tidal energy around much of its coastline, many of those same remote areas with small populations are potential sources of the supply of significant energy to the National Grid – which was not built to carry it from there.

So the grid is widely saturated – as Argyll well knows. Kintyre, Islay and Tiree, after the Pentland Firth, are front line potential generators of offshore wind and tidal energy but lack the subsea interconnectors to carry the power to the grid.

All the surveys, the feasibility studies, the trials, the action plans will see nothing but Scotland all dressed up and nowhere to go without the infrastructural investment to carry generated power to its needy customers.

Update 17th December: One for the iplayer – watch BBC 2′s transmission of Power of Scotland – originally aired in the evening of 15th December, so available for around 5 more days.

It’s highly informative and at once encouraging- inspiring even – on the sheer scale of Scotland;s renewable energy resources.

It’s almost equally frustrating, in its focus on the absolute absence of a capable grid and the dangerous delay that is causing. It describes the urgent and exciting need ‘to rewire Britain’.

It also reminds us that we’ve been here before and gave away our technological advantage – with the Pelamis wave energy device lost to Portugal because Scotland didn’t invest in the infrastructure.

We cannot afford to keep throwing away the significant advantages we have.

The photograph above, showing Pelamis Wave Energy Converters waiting for deployment at Peniche in Portugal, is by copyright holder Eigene Arbeit and is reproduced here under the GNU Free Documentation licence.

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