SNP Win - The Economics of D-I-V-O-R-C-E

ninky_2

Kohoutek wrote: »

, the Labour party will send people like Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling to campaign against him and debate him, .

out of interest - what is the dominant scottish view of gordon brown?

chewmylegoff

ninky wrote: »

out of interest - what is the dominant scottish view of gordon brown?

they think that he is just a, sort of, bigoted woman.

chewmylegoff

Shakethedisease wrote: »

They already export 20% of their electricity to England and NI !!

doesn't surprise me. however, this isn't particularly relevant to whether scotland could spend ££ billions (or €€ billions even!!) building huge wave and wind farms and then export that electricity to england. this would require a huge capital investment in the grid, as well as the capital investment in the generation machinery.

so, now, electricity costs, say, £1 a unit, and english power companies are happy to buy 1,000 units from scotland at that price

next year, scotland says "good news, we have build a wind turbine so we now have 1,000 units to sell you at £1, and another 100 units to sell you at £2." england says, we'll have that 1,000 please, you can shove the rest up your you know what.

IveSeenTheLight

chewmylegoff wrote: »

next year, scotland says "good news, we have build a wind turbine so we now have 1,000 units to sell you at £1, and another 100 units to sell you at £2." england says, we'll have that 1,000 please, you can shove the rest up your you know what.

In this simple minded example, surely the Scots would use the cheapest units first and export the dearer units.

You may not have the option of the first 1,000 at £1.

Also, what options does England have to import from elsewhere? How competative is the market?

IveSeenTheLight

This may be a worthwhile read in this interesting discussion

http://www.scottishindependenceconvention.com/Articles/Independence%20Booklet.pdf

Kohoutek

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Also, what options does England have to import from elsewhere? How competative is the market?

In terms of direct imports or exports of electricity, we're connected to the French and Irish electricity grids and will eventually be connected to the Norwegian grid too.

In terms of importing gas to generate electricity, mainland Europe/Russia via pipelines, virtually anywhere including the Middle East via shipments of liquified natural gas.

chewmylegoff

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

In this simple minded example, surely the Scots would use the cheapest units first and export the dearer units.

You may not have the option of the first 1,000 at £1.

Also, what options does England have to import from elsewhere? How competative is the market?

I don't really know anything about it simple economics suggests that Scotland won't be able to charge England whatever it likes. If it would be cheaper for us to make it ourselves we won't bother to buy it from Scotland.

I expect we probably import electricity from France as well.

Shakethedisease

I don't know if they're wrong or not, but I wouldn't be so eager to take things at face value and so literally. The Carbon Trust is a pro renewable energy think tank, their paper doesn't explain properly how they calculated either figure,

That was the one that came up first in the search ( I'm a climate change sceptic btw ).

But there's loads more if you look.

In May 2010, the Offshore Valuation Group, a collaboration of government and industry organisations, reported that the development of the UK's offshore wind, wave and tidal resource could generate the electricity equivalent of the average output of UK North Sea oil and gas over the last four decades.

Their report estimated Scotland's total practical offshore resource at 206 Gigawatts (GW). By harnessing around a third of that resource, installed offshore renewables capacity could reach 68 GW in Scotland by 2050, enabling the country to become a massive net exporter of clean, green energy.

http://www.fdimatters.com/regional-focus/scotland/840-scotland-japan-renewable-energy-agreement

I took that link from a financial investment type site.

And this from wikipedia

"The production of renewable energy in Scotland is an issue that has come to the fore in technical, economic, and political terms during the opening years of the 21st century. The natural resource base for renewables is extraordinary by European, and even global standards. In addition to an existing installed capacity of 1.3 Gigawatts (GW) of hydro-electric schemes, Scotland has an estimated potential of 36.5 GW of wind and 7.5 GW of tidal power, 25% of the estimated total capacity for the European Union and up to 14 GW of wave power potential, 10% of EU capacity.[2][3] Much of this potential remains untapped..." blah blah blah.

Anyway am getting bored reading about gigawatts and tidal technology. It's all there for the reading, the pros AND con's. It seems the potentials do seem to be huge, but it's a gamble.

However, I can't imagine that Cameron's too keen to lose out on the even the slightest chance of another 4 decades of a UK energy boom really.

ninky_2

why stop at scottish independence? all ancient british kingdoms could vie for autonomy.

mercia, northumbria, wessex.....

http://www.britainexpress.com/History/Anglo-Saxon_Britain.htm

personally i'm going for the position of empress of tottenham and am looking for a loyal and willing army. i'll have my palace in bruce castle, give out free football season tickets for all foot soldiers and get local born girl adele to perform our new national anthem.

Kohoutek

Shakethedisease wrote: »

That was the one that came up first in the search ( I'm a climate change sceptic btw ).

But there's loads more if you look.

Of course Scotland has a huge potential for renewable energy.

But it doesn't change the fact that most of the skills, materials (e.g. rare earth metals) and intellectual property to develop a massive renewable energy infrastructure will need to be imported, contrary to what Alex Salmond wants you to believe. It's the same for renewable energy development in England.

Like you said, it's a gamble. Offshore wind and other types of marine energy are relatively untested technologies, electricity grids throughout the world are not configured to use intermittent sources of electricity effectively. The success of electricity exports from Scotland generated by renewable energy depends on many variables beyond Scotland's control, like the extent of a transition towards electrified transport, the development of renewable energy in neighbouring nations, the availability of crucial materials....Things could change, just like the pro-independence pamphlet that Iveseenthelight posted talks about Scotland's excellence in financial services.

All in all, I can't see how it's a sensible to have this as a primary basis for declaring independence.