Scottish Cities Alliance

Scottish cities are leading a renewable energy revolution. With a highly skilled workforce, robust infrastructure and decarbonisation set as a top priority, Scotland’s renewables sector provides the perfect environment for investment.

Delivering a national strategy
The Scottish Government has placed achieving net-zero at the forefront of it’s agenda, implementing policies that promote the development and investment in this sector. Key initiatives include:

• reducing greenhouse gas emissions through a Just Transition to a net zero economy and society, ensuring the journey is fair and creates a better future for everyone – regardless of where they live, what they do, and who they are.
• driving Scotland’s adaptation to climate change.
• supporting decarbonisation in the public sector.
• engaging with business and industry on decarbonisation.
• engaging the public and encouraging people to move towards low carbon living
• supporting communities to tackle climate change.
• leading international action on climate change.
• supporting developing countries to tackle climate change through the Climate Justice Fund
• jointly administering the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS) alongside the UK Government, Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Executive.
• keeping track of how efficiently nitrogen is being used through a national-scale Scottish Nitrogen Balance Sheet.
• delivering a just transition, by working with communities, business, industry and the people of Scotland to plan for our net zero future.
• enacting Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategies (LHEE’s), tailored approaches to the heat transition with the Scottish Government leading the UK via legislation requiring all 32 local authorities to decarbonise buildings by 2045. In doing so, creating significant investment opportunities through the scale of the transformation required such as The Stirling District Heat Network, Scotland’s first large-scale, sewage heat recovery system to be based within a wastewater treatment plant.
  

Leading Renewable Energy Projects across Scotland’s Cities:
Scotland’s cities are home to a series of leading renewable projects right across the country, some of the most exciting include:

Dundee:
Following the declaration of a Climate Emergency in June 2019, the city of Dundee has co-designed a Climate Action Plan bringing together over 50 public, private, and community organisations to achieve a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2045 or sooner. This has created a number of investment opportunities including Dundee Waterfront, Claverhouse Industrial Park and Linlathen Park.

Aberdeen:
Just south of Aberdeen, the world’s first floating wind farm, Hywind Scotland, and the world’s largest floating wind farm, Kincardine, together generate enough renewable energy to power 71,000 homes and firmly put Scotland on the map as a major player in offshore wind.

Inverness:
Inverness (alongside Edinburgh) is home to one of the UK and Scottish Government’s Green Freeport projects. The Highland Council alongside over thirty regional and national businesses, public sector organisations and academic bodies have collaborated to support the transformative project in the Highlands.

As well as offering business tax benefits, Green Freeport status will maximise local and Scotland-wide economic benefits in our cities. For Inverness, this means a pipeline of renewable energy projects placing the Highlands at the heart of the drive towards net-zero potentially creating up to 10,250 jobs locally.

Edinburgh:
In the capital, Granton Waterfront is a new sustainable-driven development. Over the next 10-15 years, the site will deliver 3,500 new zero carbon homes, a low carbon heat network, a business start-up hub and a large coastal park. Additionally, the Edinburgh-based energy company, Nova Innovation created the first offshore tidal array, the world’s most powerful tidal turbine.

Glasgow:
Located just 20 minutes from central Glasgow, Whitelee Windfarm is the UK’s largest onshore windfarm with 215 turbines generating up to 539 megawatts of electricity, enough to power over 350,000 homes. As well as the windfarm, Whitelee is also home to the Whitelee Battery Energy Storage System, the largest windfarm battery in the UK and has the equivalent energy storage capacity of almost 4 million smartphones.

Perth:

Continuing our cities proud tradition of innovation, Perth & Kinross council recently became   the first in the world to use spiral-flow battery technology to reduce its carbon footprint. Manufactured by StorTera, an Edinburgh based intelligent energy storage developer, the project aims to develop a prototype smart energy network at the Friarton Waste Depot.

As well as reducing the Council’s carbon footprint, the new system will help bring down energy costs through smarter energy management while reducing carbon emissions and supporting the move towards low carbon transport and heating.

The smart energy network will help PKC understand the requirements for developing Local Smart Energy Systems that can be built at scale across the Council’s estate and has the potential to help tackle fuel poverty.

The Renewable Energy Future of Scottish Cities

Renewable energy is at the heart of Scotland’s cities’ futures. This is shown by the Scottish Government commitment to developing a new Green Industrial Strategy to help businesses and investors realise the enormous economic opportunities of Scotland’s transition to net zero and of creating good, well-paid jobs in sectors such as offshore wind and hydrogen.