NTA made a submission in Mar 2012 to Marine Scotland. It presented a critique of SPR’s Public Information and Public Consultation to date . Click on this link for full submission

NTA COMMUNICATION PROTOCOL WITH MARINE SCOTLAND(MS)

Following the recent NTA update some members have asked for details of the outstanding queries submitted to MS.

Consequently rather than reply to members individually NTA has decided to publish the list of outstandings as below :-

NTA wishes this protocol with MS to develop into addressing the many substantive issues applicable to the proposed Tiree (Argyll) Array .

Scottish Government’s offshore wind farm legislation, and the L&C process are new and untested .

Scottish government has described the proposed Tiree Array as ‘transformational’.

Hence NTA feels that such a protocol is in the joint interests of Scottish Government and Tiree Stakeholders.

The background to this exercise, and NTA ‘s  non- participation, is documented on its  dedicated  page on this website .

However the chairman of NTA, on  a personal basis followed the process. He attended,  and contributed , on a personal basis to each of the public consultation days , of which the attendance, at the last one ,was  abysmal.

He has made the following personal submission ,to the Steering Group of the Onshore Scenario Mapping consultation.

Whilst the consultants have to be commended in the detail of their report , the report does  not address, (it was not required to do so),  the over-arching socio- economic issues  arising from the  demographic transfer, as a consequence of  2 of the 4 operation and maintenance scenarios  being adopted. The other 2 scenarios would have  negligible impact if adopted.

The 2 scenarios , of major impact, have the  potential to transform Tiree into a ” company ” island.

Imbalances in the labour market are highlighted, but the attendant issues are not addressed . Housing requirements are addressed, but not how they are to be delivered.

The estimated manpower  requirements have been made  by SPR, without apparent interrogation. No  reduction is factored in for the difference  in  manpower requirement for a 180 turbine Array as opposed  to a 300 turbine Array. O&M labour ,other than a nominal base staff ,is in direct proportion to the number of Turbines . This is not reflected in this draft report.

At the outset to this exercise,Dec 2010,   SPR made the statement that this  “exercise  be de-coupled from the Licence and Consenting process” . SPR’s statement is not addressed .

This begs a very obvious question , namely what is the ” effect ” of the exercise ?

With the above background , and  the research for this draft report referencing the Ph2ARC report which NTA is currently reviewing, NTA feels this personal submission should be  brought to NTA members attention.

Any comments /queries please come back though the website as below

Scottish independence: The real reason for SPR’s delay for Tiree Array ?

Below are extracts of Peter Atherton’s evidence to the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee’s scrutiny of the impact of potential Scottish independence on energy and climate change.  The Committee met on Tues 24^th April 2012

Peter Atherton is head of European utility sector research at Citigroup Global Markets and the author of a controversial Nov 2011 report addressing the independence issue and Scottish Government’s Renewable policy .This NOV report suggested that an independent Scotland would “probably not” be able to support a large-scale renewable energy industry,  and offered,in Nov 2011 , this emphatic view on the development of Tiree(Argyll) Array;

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We would be very surprised if Scottish Power /Iberdrola were to go ahead with the Argyll Array until the constitutional position of Scotland within the UK was settled

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Alex Salmond ridiculed this Nov report

Mr Atherton advised the committee :-

• “All” of the investors he had spoken to had decided to halt investment on their offshore wind projects until the post-referendum regulatory regime was settled
• It was “questionable” whether the current UK-wide renewables subsidy would continue if Scotland seceded.
• Investors “cannot and will not make these investments” without the guarantee of ongoing subsidies “
• Current investments were “small-ticket items”, inadequate to realise Scottish Government’s “big plans”
• “From the corporates who are involved in investing in offshore wind, particularly in Scotland, that we have been talking to in recent months, all of them have said to us: ‘We will not progress with offshore wind projects in Scotland until such time as we gain that certainty’.”

CITI group has a client relationship with Iberdrola, SPR’s parent company

Visit Scotland has just published  a self-seeking , damage limitation  survey, with regard to wind farm development and tourism. This Visit Scotland Survey will require professional examination of its format, and questions, to establish its ” confidence rating ” . NTA did a similar examination of a SPR survey re Tiree Array. NTA  established SPR’s survey had only a 64 % confidence rating which rendered it in-admissible  as a credible  survey /document .

It is  a general  survey of attitudes and views, with no tangible connection to specific windfarm impacted tourist areas. Of significance is 20 % of tourists claiming the presence of a wind farm would affect their decision about where to visit or where to stay on a UK holiday or short break

The survey below also incorporates NTA ‘s response to Visit Scotland’s survey

The most relevant type of  Question to Tiree, or any other tourist area impacted by a  windfarm, has not been asked . This is a serious omission.

The Q would be:-

Would you spend a week, and £1500- £2500,  as a tourist in Scotland in  area where 180-300  turbines 200 m high ,were located only 5 km from your holiday accommodation, and in constant view wherever you went during your holiday ?

Would you tolerate the noise and the night-light pollution?

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This Visit Scotland’s survey is an attempted  damage limitation exercise

Britain’s nascent wind industry has received a serious setback after a major foreign investor scrapped plans for a research centre and turbine factories that would have created 1,700 jobs – 12 months after giving them the green light.

Doosan Power Systems of Korea blamed deteriorating confidence in offshore wind for its decision to suspend construction of a £170m “centre of excellence” in Glasgow and long-term plans for manufacturing.

Its concerns were underlined by another major offshore services business, FTSE 100-listed Petrofac, which warned that only 30% of the expected wind projects in the North Sea might ever get built because of financing problems.

Doosan, whose plans were unveiled by Scotland‘s first minister Alex Salmond, said it had told the Scottish government and its customers four months ago of its decision, but it made no public statement until the news leaked out at an industry conference in Denmark on Wednesday.

“In light of the overall economic conditions and liquidity issues in Europe, Doosan Power Systems decided in December 2011 to withdraw from its plans for developing offshore wind turbines in Scotland,” Doosan told the Guardian.

However, in a statement to the industry media outlet ReCharge, it blamed “sapping market confidence [for] putting a question mark over the future development of the offshore wind market”.

Doosan announced its project in March last year, saying it had already started to recruit 200 staff for a research arm that would work on developing a 6MW turbine for the wider European market.

The company, which owns major industrial names such as Ingersoll Rand and Babcock, expected to build at least 200 turbines a year from a new assembly plant in either England or more likely Scotland. An additional 500 direct jobs were expected to be created in its assembly plants, and 1,000 supplier posts.

Ayman Asfari, the chief executive of Petrofac, said he wanted to build a wind business, but the economic conditions made it difficult: “We think that between 30% and 50% of the targets set for round three of offshore wind expansion are likely to be realised. There are few utilities that have the financial strength to meet the required scale of necessary investment.”

The gloomy predictions come just weeks after General Electric Energy‘s UK managing director, Magued Eldaief, said that his company’s proposed wind manufacturing investment – amounting to at least £100m – was “on hold” pending ministers’ decisions on reforms to the energy market.

The rise in negative sentiment is a blow to the coalition government, which has been trying to champion a new manufacturing boom, despite mixed messages on the environment.

Conservative backbench MPs have urged the prime minister to slow down the drive to develop renewable power, on the basis that it requires public money that the country can no longer afford.

The arguments against wind have been strengthened by the discovery of potentially cheap shale gas in Britain and comments from the chancellor that the UK would allow itself to be made uncompetitive by chasing European Union environmental goals. Meanwhile, a new national body opposing both onshore and offshore wind turbines will launch in Westminster on Thursday at an event sponsored by Lord Carlile, the Liberal Democrat peer and former Montgomeryshire MP.

Scottish Government’s handling of Doosan ‘s withdrawal raised searching questions in the Scottish Parliament

Spain : the roots of financial crisis:

This article in the Financial Times ( 21-22April)  by John Authers offers an over view of the Spanish financial crisis .

Poss the link to the FT won’t open unless you ” subscribe “  to the FT ( it costs nowt ) but the following are the main points from JA’s article

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Spain embodies all the problems that brought the world into financial crisis in the first place.

Spain’s issue is not with its fiscal policy, nor with a particularly overextended welfare state. It was not profligate in the years before the credit crisis and entered it with outstanding government debt of only about 40 per cent of gross domestic product. The UK had debt of 94 per cent of GDP.

Rather, Spain’s problem is a speculative bubble, driven largely by a European local version of “global imbalances”, that has yet to deflate properly because its banks and authorities have been slow to recognise realities.

But why is Spain now in crisis, while the US is not? Because its banks have not yet admitted the scale of the writedowns they must take in the wake of the bubble. In terms of their book value (the value of assets minus liabilities on balance sheets), Spain’s banks have multiplied eightfold since 1998, according to an analysis of MSCI data by David Morris of Global Wealth Allocation in London. That is twice the growth for the rest of Europe, and 80 per cent more than in the US.

Meanwhile, Spanish banks’ earnings are at about half their peak levels, much as in the UK and the US. The difference is that in those countries earnings are recovering after taking huge writedowns to take account of the burst credit bubble. Spanish banks have yet to do this, and the market plainly expects more writedowns before they
are done.

The news of the past few weeks shows that this is ever harder to postpone. House prices are falling. Spain’s banking regulator also announced that non-performing loans had risen to 8.16 per cent of banks’ portfolios, the worst figure in 18 years. Entering the crisis, less than 1 per cent of loans were non-performing.

Meanwhile, implementing the kind of austerity demanded by markets and by other European countries will be tough. With unemployment anchored at more than 20 per cent, Spaniards are feeling the pain already. Other countries making cuts, such as Portugal and Ireland, benefit from a strong sense of cohesion. This is not true of Spain, which devolves power to regions that feel strongly independent of each other and often speak different languages

All of this explains why attention is back on Spain. There is plainly good reason to be concerned about the country. But has the market adequately priced this?

It is hard to see how Spain could be rescued with the funds the EU has available for the task. That is why the International Monetary Fund is drumming up more. It is a decent bet that one way or another the rest of Europe will find a way to stop a Spanish banking crisis from turning into a broader meltdown; but there is ample scope for markets to get nervous about that judgment, and push down prices, in the months ahead.

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An article in the Lex Column in the same edition of the FT  makes reference to Repsol and the implications of  Argentina’s nationalise Repsol’s 51 % interst in YPF .

33% of Moray Offshore Renewables Ltd is held by Spanish company REPSOL .

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The international diplomatic and financial repercussions from Argentina’s shocking plan to nationalise  YPF, a 51 per cent interest belonging to Spain’s Repsol, are only starting to play out.

In the meantime, Repsol’s gearing (ex-YPF) edges up to about 40 per cent and Standard & Poor’s, having cut its rating on the Spanish group to the lowest investment grade this week, is warning of further action if debt reduction steps are not taken in 2012. That raises the possibility of asset disposals, even if Repsol is playing down “exceptional measures”.

The Spanish colonisation of Scottish Off shore Wind farm development is facing  serious  financial issues .

Tiree (Argyll) Array   DELAY:

Confusion, or is SPR being ‘economical with the actualité ‘?

SPR has announced a further delay in submitting its planning application for the proposed Tiree(Argyll) Array .

The proposed Array  is now delayed till 2^nd ha 2014. If consented , the Array will not come on line till 2020. Note , if consented, under the Crown Estates lease , SPR has a further 12 months option to commit to developing the Array.

SPR’s announcement was tucked away in the sub-text of a paragraph headed ‘Environmental Impact Assessment’ in the latest SPR update in AnT ( Update 26 /Mar 30 2012). This paragraph made specific reference to Basking Sharks and Great Northern Divers as impacted species by the projected Array. By referencing the regime in which these issues are addressed and  stating “SPR is therefore now planning to submit the consent application in 2^nd ha 2014  rather than in 2013 as initially forecast “ is SPR implying linkage between the delay and environmental issues?. This cannot be the case.

The Great Northern Diver (GND) issue, was flagged up by SPR as a possible constraint , as early as the summer of 2010, following a bird survey which SPR  had conducted.

Similarly SPR  offered a ” Constraints Montage “  referring to the GND  at their 28 June 2011 Public Information Day (PID) .

SPR Constraints Montage (June 2011) for the Great Northern Diver

SPR stated at this June 2011 PID  “ An  EIA on the project is underway. We are currently aiming to submit a planning application for Argyll Array to the Scottish Govt in 2012”

Confusion arises at this juncture because, three weeks prior to the 28 June 2011 PID SPR had advised a delay as follows;- “the projected date for the submission of a full planning application to Marine Scotland is now March 2013” .

Leaving this confusion aside, SPR’s current update in AnT would appear to infer the GND issue was discovered  after SPR appointed their lead consultant for the EIA “ late last year “ (ie late 2011, presumably after the PID in June 2011) ) .  SPR go on to say that the “Array must be planned in strict accordance with all consenting regulations. SPR is therefore now planning to submit the consent application in 2^nd half 2014 rather than in 2013 as initially forecast.”

No one would suggest that SPR would not be planning the Tiree Array in strict accordance with the consenting regime.  So , what may SPR be inferring?  Could there be some new regulatory requirement introduced to dictate this further delay? NTA is unaware of any specific modification MS’ requirements viz-a-viz Tiree Array. No comparable delay has been intimated from other developers working towards submitting their Array planning applications.

It would be a conceit on NTA’s part, to suggest that NTA’s correspondence ,in the last 3 weeks,  on environmental issues with SPR,  has provoked this delay.

Maybe one, or a combination of the following may be the cause of the delay:-

• CITI’s assessment is much closer to a political reality than Scottish Government would prefer to acknowledge.

• Iberdrola has more pressing, competing issues.

• Technical and/or environmental complexities have emerged.

Tiree(Argyll)Array’s cumulative slippage is now 2 ½ yrs, since the full extent of the proposed Array was revealed , 2 yrs ago , in June 2010.

Any further slippage may take the proposed Array outside Scottish Government’s 2020 Renewables target /obligations. This in itself suggests the proposed Tiree (Argyll)  Array may be superfluous to those targets /obligations, as suggested in the report ” Powering Scotland” by Reform Scotland.