The misguided and deeply dangerous actions of the US and Israel in attacking Iran have, aside from the awful humanitarian consequences, within hours impacted all of us with higher gas, petrol and diesel prices, and proves another favourite phrase of mine, that everything is connected to everything else.
EU leaders met last week in Brussels for one of their regular summits and discussed all this, without much of a conclusion, I have to say. There was close to unanimity that, despite the urging of the US president, Iran is not Europe’s war. As EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas put it “starting war is like a love affair – it’s easy to get in and difficult to get out”.
The US and Israeli action has embittered and fragmented the Iranian regime, but it is dug in for the long haul and the most obvious reaction – closing the Strait of Hormuz – has huge consequences for the global economy. Because we are still far too dependent upon fossil fuels imported from an unstable region. With about a fifth of the world’s oil passing through the strait, it is a pinch point that was all too obviously going to be a casualty of the conflict.
So the EU and other European countries are not going to war, and rightly so, but the mobilisation of an economic response will take some time.
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Spain announced on Friday that it will commit €5 billion to a package to soften the impact. It is that sort of scale we need to see from the UK also. The miserly £4.4 million package announced to help households off-grid dependent on heating oil (boosted by £5.6m by the Scottish Government) goes nowhere near far enough, but ultimately all these sticking plasters miss the point – we need to decarbonise far more urgently.
And from a Scottish perspective, this is our opportunity because we have won every energy jackpot over the last three centuries. We had wood in abundance, then coal, then hydro, then oil and gas, then wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, you name it, we have it in abundance. So why has your energy bill just gone up?
The UK energy market simply is not fit for purpose. The rules were written when the intention was to give market signals over the location of new gas-fired power stations, the world, and technology, has moved on. An independent Scotland simply won’t run our energy market like this.
But while our electricity generation is being held back, we also need to look at how we use energy too, and again, we have an opportunity. If rural households are dependent on heating oil, investment is needed in better insulation and renewable sources of heat and power, which will build resilience, lower costs and decarbonise as well. It is a win-win that I think needs to be public sector-led.
Where the money comes from is of course the question, but here’s yet another argument for EU membership – the EU has committed €503bn to the European Green Deal Investment Plan. We could, and should be all over it. There is already talk in Brussels of accelerating investment in renewables and more cash to help households insulate better. These are talks we could bring vast expertise to and benefit hugely from.
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If Scotland were in the EU, we would be able to leverage a disproportionate share of that fund into our economy, because we have a disproportionate share of the renewables and a disproportionate share of poor housing needing investment. We would be able to help meet the EU’s decarbonisation objectives while boosting our economy, warming folks’ homes and cutting our bills.
So it is all the more boneheaded to see the Reform UK manifesto (and I’m breaking my cardinal rule in never giving the opposition oxygen here) commit them to “ending net stupid zero”.
They’re so keen to work against Scotland’s interests that they would shackle us to an expensive, insecure and unsustainable energy system where we are price takers and dependent on imports. Lunacy on stilts.
There are a lot of arguments for independence in Europe, but energy is one of the biggest because it touches all our lives. How we heat our homes and businesses, make and transport our goods, all of it is impacted by energy, and we should be one of the richest and most resilient countries in the world. But the UK has delivered a broken energy market despite the vast advantages (and vast budgets) of oil and gas, leaving us all poorer and more insecure.
We can, however, change that. Energy policy was specifically reserved to the UK parliament in 1999 and very deliberately so. Devolution is not fit for purpose for the changes we need to make, and the EU meanwhile is working on exactly the priorities we could make synonymous with Scotland. Alex Salmond’s vision of Scotland as Europe’s Green Powerhouse was appealing then and even more urgent now, attractive at home and abroad. There’s a big prize to be won.