Lewis and Islay goalposts in Hammerfest HS1000 marine turbine development

Norwegian energy company, Hammerfest, has announced a project to build ten of its HS1000 marine turbines at BiFab’s yard at Arnish in Stornoway in the Isle of Lewis.

The turbines whose development model was tested in the waters of Orkney, will first be deployed in Argyll Sound of Islay with an array of ten to be installed there by 2013, generating enough energy to power 1,000 homes.

By 2017 the company, part-owned by Scottish Power Renewables, intends to have up to 95 of the machines in an array in the Pentland Firth, whose tidal power has famously been described by First Minister Alex Salmond, as the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy’.

Argyll is second to the Pentland Firth in marine energy resources, with its many inter-island tidal bores like the Sounds of Islay and Jura, the Gulf of Corryvreckan and the Grey Dogs.

The Pentland Firth project will compete for Scotland’s £10 million Saltire Prize, established by the Scottish Government to help to drive advances in marine energy development.

The Scottish Government – with Argyll’s MSP Jim Mather as Minister for Energy – has established Scotland as a key international focus  for technological development in the marine energy sphere. Hammerfest’s Stein Anderson has said that all of their competitors are here and that they want to lead the field. That is the sort of situation that drives both technological and entrepreneurial development.

What Scotland must do is to get into that act itself, with Scottish innovation, expertise and manufacture firmly established in our own waters and progressively leading development. This gives the country control of what the key renewable energy source and it builds the knowledge and performance to fuel export markets.

It will need serious investment from both the public and private sectors. The extent to which, nationally, Scotland, rises to that challenge will prove whether this part of the UK has recovered from the post-imperial malaise and is ready to drive development – on merit -  in today’s world.