How a 20-year standoff with MoD is preventing £9bn renewable energy boom in Dumfriesshire

In order to play our part and compete with our international friends, we must begin to be more proactive in finding ways to turbocharge economic growth and attract inward investment. Considering proposed major investment schemes more positively – looking for the ‘how we can’, rather than the ‘why we shouldn’t’ – will limit the risks of potential opportunities going elsewhere.

There are various challenges to achieving the UK’s ambitions but the majority of these can be overcome if the governments deliver on their pledges to achieve net-zero targets. One such challenge, that began in 2005, has resulted in a stalemate between the Ministry of Defence and wind farm developers that is preventing the delivery of £9 billion of renewable energy investment for six gigawatts of wind farm projects across the south of Scotland.

Cheap and clean wind energy

The Eskdalemuir National Environmental Laboratory in Dumfries and Galloway is one of three UK facilities measuring seismic activity for national researchers. However, uncertainty and inaction over implementing a solution to unblock the development of regionally and nationally critical onshore windfarm projects around the facility are now having significant and detrimental consequences at local, regional and national level.

Objections by the MoD, which has responsibility for the observatory, mean a pipeline of projects that would produce cheap, clean, renewable wind energy is stalled. If the governments at Holyrood and Westminster are prepared to work together with MoD to overcome this issue which has a much-discussed, but not yet acted upon path to resolution, then concerns over our long-term energy security may be resolved and the resulting regional economic boom would improve lives and communities for generations to come.

Some £9bn of investment in the regional economy is stuck and unable to be delivered. Job creation and training opportunities to sustain our thriving energy sector are being missed.

These projects are essential in our national mission to decarbonise electricity production, whilst meeting the ever-increasing demand for clean power, and for which, crucially, connections to the National Grid are available within the next decade.

Huge financial benefits

Six gigawatts of clean energy could be achieved, the financial benefits of which would transform the economic and social fortunes of the south of Scotland in particular. Investment available from community benefit schemes could total £30 million a year for the region – a £1.2bn windfall for the Scottish Borders and Dumfries and Galloway, over the operational lifetime of those wind farms.

At a time when the Scottish Government is admirably focused on building community wealth, a green light to the renewable projects caught up in the stalemate at Eskdalemuir could, in addition to community benefit schemes, open up community ownership of assets, giving those living closest to the developments a direct role in ensuring the success of their project, and additional income beyond community benefit funds.

With a declining rural economy, onshore wind developments offer an unparalleled opportunity for communities to secure a sustainable benefit from this natural capital. Massively ambitious targets on the delivery of renewables set by Holyrood and Westminster are surely achievable only through a cross-border mission to unlock the impasse being experienced around Eskdalemuir.

Years of intergovernmental discord

Recent evidence presented to the MoD demonstrates that there is indeed greater scope for development within the area of restriction around the laboratory. However, the never-ending uncertainty on this matter risks driving investment elsewhere, as stakeholders face continuing challenges to secure and deliver their development pipeline.

Frankly, it’s high time that the years of intergovernmental discord were set aside and a willingness to work together in the national interest to implement solutions was found, before we once again miss the opportunity to lead ourselves to a more secure energy network and the financial rewards being offered to our communities remain out of reach.

Where planning permission can be granted, subject to conditions supporting the delivery of inevitable solutions, we should release the investment boom into the regional and national economies so that local businesses, local communities and the national drive to net zero can all benefit.

It is time to act decisively. It is time to release the logjam that is holding back the south of Scotland’s new economic boom. It is time for us all to work together for a greener, more prosperous future.

Sarah McIntosh is managing director of Muirhall Energy