Blethering Skite

Scotland is an energy-rich country - but its businesses are being forced to pay the highest prices in the world for using it. Almost every company in Scotland is feeling the pain, from high street hairdressing salons to farmers to whisky producers. 

But, while exorbitant energy bills are forcing Scottish business leaders to make increasingly difficult decisions such as laying off staff, more than £200 million of public money has been paid by the UK energy systems operator to turn off wind turbines, most of them in Scotland, this year alone. 

This problem is getting worse all the time. As more renewable power comes on stream, the times when Scotland is producing more power than it currently uses are becoming more frequent. The interconnectors between Scotland and England can only carry so much power - and so when there is an excess the Electricity Systems Operator pays Scottish energy generators to go dark.

If energy was cheaper in Scotland then businesses could expand. It would reduce the extortionate bills for current operations and also provide incentives for entrepreneurs to find new ways to use it - including smelting metal, building data centres, splitting water molecules to make hydrogen and more. That would benefit the economy and boost growth. 

If Scotland were an independent country, Scottish businesses would certainly not pay what they are currently charged. Scotland is a renewable energy powerhouse being penalised by the way energy is managed for and by vested interests in the south of England. Hanging onto one UK tariff is old-fashioned and unfair to Scotland. Energy companies make money from this arrangement - but the Scottish economy loses.