Evidence versus wishful thinking?

The fears expressed recently in the John O’Groat Journal front page article ‘Imported labour’ concern over Caithness energy projects are well founded.  There are plenty of detailed academic studies that support the claims that labour is largely imported and that there are few longer term jobs associated with energy projects placed in rural environments.

A particularly relevant study is that carried out in Portugal by researchers from Portugal and France on the Local labor impact of wind energy investment**. As they state in the abstract of their publication “Although economic development is an argument for investment incentive policies,  little evidence exists as to their net impact on local-level unemployment”

The researchers carried out a detailed analysis of the installed base of windfarms during the period 2007 to 2017 across all of Portugal. Their findings confirm what many already suspected - there are short-term effects (reduced local unemployment) during the two years of the construction phase.  Furthermore those employed are mainly unskilled male workers.

For the subsequent operation and maintenance phase, the impact on the local labour market is very small and developers import this work from other countries.

In summary – the construction phase may bring some low skilled jobs along with imported temporary labour whilst longer term operation and maintenance is carried out by workers from other countries. In Portugal, permission for the exploration of wind energy is granted by the central government with the main determinants of location of wind farms being wind potential and access to the grid.

All of this evidence based analysis seems to have been ignored by those responsible for putting together the recent report Regional Transformational Opportunities in the Highlands and Islands. Their view expressed in a recent press article is that we stand on the brink of “a once-in-a-generation opportunity” with hundreds of development projects worth up to £100bn capable of creating 18,000 jobs within 15 years.

Aye right!

Who do you believe? The evidence based material of the Portugal study and other researchers across the world or the latest promotion from Highlands and Islands Enterprise?

**Hélia Costa, Linda Veiga. Local labor impact of wind energy investment: An analysis of Portuguese municipalities. Energy Economics, 2021, 94, https://hal.science/hal-03493453v1

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Save Caithness has two main aims: i) to embark on carefully selected specialist campaigns intended to take a pro-active approach to protecting our rural environment and raising awareness of the serious issues faced by residents and wildlife and ii) to provide useful general guidance on how to object to energy related planning applications along with facilitating access to more detailed information about current applications  Stay updated about our activities by signing up for our mailing list here.