Most Of Scotland’s Wind Farms Owned By Foreign Companies
By Paul Homewood
h/t George Herraghty
Nicola Sturgeon loves to boast about wind power in Scotland. She seems to forget that Scotland does not actually own any of it:
Nearly a third of Scotland’s biggest wind farms have owners with links to offshore tax havens in the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Guernsey and Jersey.
An investigation by The Ferret has also revealed that 39 of the largest 50 wind farms are ultimately owned outwith Scotland in England, Spain, France, Germany, Norway, China and elsewhere.
Forget the nonsense about tax havens. The simple fact is that all of Scotland’s wind farms were built with private capital, and it is private companies who actually own the assets and receive the income, even those based in Scotland.
This inevitably means that most of the subsidies paid end up going to companies abroad, and therefore little benefit to the Scottish economy. The same also applies to the rest of the UK wind industry.
Some people seem incapable of understanding this:
Labour MSP, Paul Sweeney, added: “The huge renewable energy wealth potential in Scotland is being looted from our people by international tax avoidance through these elaborate offshore ownership structures.
“Despite its vast wealth-generating potential for the country, the profits from generation are being siphoned overseas. It truly is a national scandal, and fixing it must start by asserting Scottish ownership across the whole energy sector.”
He seems to think that wind power is somehow “free”.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Be fair. It is Westminster that has decreed that there will be no public investment in building windfarms. Everything has to be ‘private’ investment these days and it matters not to this Tory Government where this money comes from ; and where the owners are registered for tax purposes. All a bit different in ‘little ‘ Norway or Abu Dhabi who have the two largest sovereign wealth funds in the world.
Why on earth should taxpayers’ money be wasted on such worthless projects?
No good reason to waste taxpayers’ money on these white elephants which were condemned by the government scientific adviser, Sir David MacKay, Cambridge University. as not to be touched pending major advances in electricity storage.
Sounds as if the likes of Ed Milliband had a rush of blood to his head, not for the first time.
Why have they not been stopped now? Some form of corruption, I bet?
BTW
I assume you know that most of these wind farms were built under Labour and Lib Dim subsidy schemes?
What nonsense. Those countries have huge sovereign wealth funds because they have vast reserves and tiny populations. And the idea that foregoing returns on capital in ONE SECTOR makes you poorer is economically illiterate. UK capital invests for the best return wherever that is and so UK capital makes as much as it possibly can. If UK – or Scottish money isn’t invested in wind it doesn’t matter because its invested elsewhere, not sitting around doing nothing.
And being domiciled in a tax haven doesn’t exempt you from UK corporation tax. It may help to avoid CGT on a sale at the corporate level.
Frankly the original article and some of the responses to it are simply totally ignorant.
This is the basis of the invisible earnings sector of the economy. We have completely lost the plot regarding the trade balance aspects of economics and the consequent employment that is produced to generate new wealth. Was MacMillan right saying that “we are selling off the family silver”, and does it matter?
It seems that the invisible earnings are the magic money tree that is funding the UK at present while we export little material but import loads.
Retrospectively, it is obvious that the late Sir David Mackay’s warning to avoid these useless and damaging white elephants should have been heeded, pending very radical developments in electricity storage. The same is true of e cars and other/all substitutes for fossil fuel power.
They could not be scrapped now, but what waste, especially since AGW is a myth.
Guess who will be paying to scrap these white elephants when the time comes.
And where most of the jobs were when they were manufactured and built!
“New lamps for old” and “Emporer’s new clothes” come to mind also!
I am beginning to understand just how frail Scotland’s handling of its finances must be. The SNP has ‘lost’ £600,000 down the back of a sofa and its Members of Parliament don’t grasp how its renewable agency barons own all the subsidies.
Didn’t I read that a contract for steel towers for one of the farms (at least) were made abroad, as UK companies couldn’t compete? Then there are the maintenance contracts run by Chinese.
“It truly is a national scandal, and fixing it must start by asserting Scottish ownership across the whole energy sector.”
You didn’t have the capital to build it. Now that others have provided it, you wish to steal it from them.
Nice guy.
Note to others considering investing in Scotland: your investment is subject to seizure from the government, for reasons.
What to do with rusting wind turbines and useless lithium batteries will be the next cowboy industry – with Government turning a blind eye of course.
Meanwhile Scotland are massively importing power from England on account of the wind has gone to bed. Go to Gridwatch https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ and click on the download button. Select you period and you will see on the excel spread sheet the transfers between England and Scotland. When the win is a bit slack Scotland is heavily dependent on England. Come January next year when 950MW of Hunterston B shuts down the situation gets worse.
A silly post. When England are importing from France, the Netherlands, Scotland et al, Which is almost all the time,, are you not worried that England is already heavily dependent on others ? Would you like to make a comment about how dependent Yorkshire is.
What on earth are you on about?
It is Sturgeon who keeps bragging about “Scotland’s wind power”
And it is the Scottish Herald who are moaning that foreign companies have built wind farms and are in receipt og obscene subsidies
Nicholas, allow me to explain why it is not a silly post. The GB grid (England, Scotland and Wales) imports from various non UK countries (currently Republic of Ireland, France, Netherlands, Belgium and soon Norway) to take benefit of cheap supplies of power when there is a surplus elsewhere. We also export over those interconnectors when we have a surplus. All of those interconnectors land in England or Wales and only one of the numerous proposed interconnectors are planned to land in Scotland. This latter one, North Connect from Norway to Scotland, is a private concern and it is looking dubious whether it finally materialises – it was actually banned by the Norwegian Socialist government for a period of 3 years. Norwegian domestic electricity prices are increasing due to exports and this is not popular with Norwegians.
The issue with Scotland is should they chose to separate from the UK they will effectively only be electrically connected to the rUK. Scotland only currently has three large power stations Peterhead CCGT, Torness Nuclear and Hunterston B Nuclear which as I previously posted is closing in January 2022. The SNP have a no new nuclear policy so clearly their alleged concerns over CO2 emissions are questionable.
This above closure will leave Scotland with under half of its own requirements able to be met by reliable dispatchable supply. Hydro plants represent only a small part of its remaining demand and the result is that when it is not windy, importing electricity becomes critically essential rather than an economic choice to save a bit of money. Exporting Scottish surplus (whould obviously not subsidised by the rUK) wind means it will sell for a very low price (if at all) as the rUK has its own supplies as well as other import options. Conversely when Scotland has a shortage it has only one import choice who can determine whatever price they wish i.e. very expensive.
For large parts of this year wind turbine generation has been remarkably poor
– as I type the entire UK fleet is only managing 720MW with overall national demand of 35,170MW.
The SNP are completely misleading the Scottish public regarding their energy situation. Independence will result in loss of rUK subsidies hugely increasing Scottish cost burden (I for one in England would refuse to needlessly subsidise any “foreign” nation’s generation) as well as creating a very unstable grid heavily dependent on the goodwill of a rejected partner.
The following reports into the situation are from a Scottish energy analyst and explain further the potential serious dangers over and above the cost implications.
http://euanmearns.com/blackout/
http://euanmearns.com/blackout-the-sequel/
So no my post is reality and not silly at all.
I spot Big Brother at Facebook, have permitted someone to make a post on the Scotland Against Spin group,
but then skewed it by inserting their own bit of *framing*
“See how the average temperature in your area is changing”
That is #PRtrickery
– example #2
Stew, I appreciate your posts, you are clearly operating with data and insight. However, I find your posts a hair too cryptic and often wonder what message you are trying to convey. I know this takes longer and requires more patience but a bit more context and explanation would allow me to get your drift. Sorry to be so obtuse.
@Chriskshaw I don’t think that comment is cryptic at all
#1 I gave a link to the person’s Facebook post
#2 I quoted the exact words that Facebook have inserted in a box at the base of the person’s own words.
ie He is not allowed to have his own free words, rather FB have framed it
That is Public Relations trickery on their part
ie they are operating like Big Brother in 1984
Do the land owners of the landed towers get a fee?
Who might they be?
Duke of Roxburgh and David Cameron’s father in law come to mind and doubtless myriad others not short of a bob or an acre or two.
The Braes O’ Doune site (32 x 2 MW) for instance, was quoted (Telegraph, ca. 2016) as just shy of £1 million per annum land rental, so about £3K/day, for every day for twenty years or the ‘lifetime’.
Check Earl(s) of Moray and estates, and ‘rort’.
Remember when renewable policies were being drafted? The wind developers said they needed “certainty”. Certainty of what? A casual observer might think they wanted guaranteed market access. However, they got guaranteed profits if the wind was not blowing and couldn’t generate, if the wind was too strong and they couldn’t generate, if the wind was perfect and there was too much generation and had to shut down. The certainty was that the wind turbines would be profitable, no matter what the vagaries of the weather were. For an industry that operates at 25-35% of nameplate capacity, that was quite a generous policy.
Who pays the exorbitant fees for the power purchase from these white-elephants, and who guarantees them irrespective of demand? I bet that it is not the Scottish government, this is a bit like the claimed ownership of north sea oil when it was plentiful and the costs of decommissioning the rigs! “Having your cake and eating it comes” to mind.
“Who pays the exorbitant fees for the power purchase from these white-elephants” all UK energy bill payers. If only Scottish bill payers had to foot the bill for only Scottish windfarms their bills would sky rocket.
One of a million drawbacks to Scottish secession which the SNP will not warn gullible voters about, so the Unionists must do.It’s not a project fear”
A press release today says that Shell and Scottish Power want to build a fleet of floating wind-generators off-shore Scotland to make Scotland the “World-centre” for this technology: who is kidding who?
No doubt if the subsidies are right and no nasty guarantees of power are needed and they can avoid paying Crown Estates by floating, they will go ahead. Sadly, this type of nonsense ticks all the eco-warriors’ boxes and the SNP’s too: I suspect that they know who runs No 10 now.
Is the whole wind turbine scam (and future ones to come) founded on corruption?
I suspect so, or it would have been liquidated long ago, just as it ought , and now.