Scotland can take the lead in renewable energy’s future

Scotland is the most natural country in Europe for renewable energy – but if it wants to retain its industry lead, further investment desperately needs to be ploughed into wave and tidal power in particular, local authority planning procedures need to brought up-to-date and the sector urgently needs more specialist staff.

Those are the conclusions of Henning Von Barsewich of German renewable energy firm Repower, which plans to grow its presence significantly here from a UK headquarters in Edinburgh.
Although the potential for offshore and onshore windfarms is huge, another stumbling block to growing those percentages further is that the Scottish Executive needs urgently to revise its ageing planning application procedures to allow the industry to grow.

If it does that, in terms of scale, Von Barsewich says there is practically no limit to the number of projects that can be built around Scotland’s shores.

Scotsman