AN INDEPENDENT Scotland would not be able to afford its ambitious targets on renewable energy if the UK government refused to continue to subsidise it, five leading academics have argued.
The team led by Dr David Toke, of the University of Birmingham, warn that support from Westminster would be “politically unachievable”, because it could only be paid for with a rise in consumer bills.
The report, published this week in Political Quarterly, says: “The Scottish Government has led the way in the pursuit of ambitious renewable energy objectives, but it is still the case that without the subsidies paid by electricity consumers in the rest of the UK, the Scottish Government’s ambitious... read more