This week, we’re shining a spotlight on SSEN Transmission! In part 2 of this blog, find out more about how SSEN Transmission is upgrading the grid to deliver clean energy, jobs and community benefits.
As is customary in the autumn, our politicians gathered for their annual party conferences, setting out their plans to generate the economic growth that our prosperity and public services depend on – and ensure that the benefits are spread fairly among our communities. SSEN Transmission is working hard to deliver these ambitions here in the Highlands.
Whilst there is rightly robust debate about how we achieve these ambitions, there is broad consensus about the need to grow the economy.
The country’s rapid transition to a clean power future – which will deliver energy security through more affordable, low carbon homegrown electricity – is a major driver of this economic activity and growth. And unlike other features of the UK economy, the action isn’t all happening in London and southeast England: quite the reverse.
A report earlier this year commissioned by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit showed that the “net-zero economy” is booming in the UK as never before – growing by 10 per cent in one year: light years ahead of the rest of the economy. And this net-zero economy is especially important to Scotland, supporting more than 100,000 full-time equivalent jobs.
Upgrading the electricity transmission grid to enable this transition to clean power is at the heart of this economic growth. The SSEN Transmission network in the north of Scotland is central to that mission, with the potential capability to meet a fifth of Great Britain’s demand for clean power.
This summer we were proud to release our book, The Highland Grid: The Story of Power Transmission in the North. The book shines a light on the remarkable history of how the transmission grid was built across the north of Scotland. It tells the story of the people, engineering, and determination that made it possible to bring power to communities across Scotland and beyond.
The Highland Grid captures not only the technical achievements, but also the lasting legacy that electricity transmission has had on the life in the north of Scotland.
As a business rooted in Scotland, with a proud Highland heritage stretching back decades, we take our responsibility to work in partnership with the communities we serve extremely seriously. That means delivering economic benefits and other gains for the north of Scotland from hosting our electricity transmission infrastructure.
Last year, we were proud to open a new offshore hub in our Inverness office as we continue on our exciting path of growth, helping to bring our supply chain to the Highlands.
This spring, we also opened a cutting-edge £17 million operations warehouse in Inverness, a vital new hub designed to bolster the resilience and efficiency of the north of Scotland’s high-voltage electricity transmission network – built by Beauly-based Global Infrastructure (Scotland) Ltd.
A big illustration of the benefits of upgrading the grid is the jobs boost for the Highlands from Sumitomo’s investment in a new cable manufacturing facility in Nigg, underpinned by our Shetland 2 High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) link project.
Also important was our recent announcement of a maintenance framework for our sites, inviting local contractors in the Highlands and elsewhere in the north of Scotland to apply to tender for this work.
And this autumn, we welcomed a record number of new graduates into our business, where we have grown from just 400 employees in 2019 to 2,500 and still growing today, many of whom are based in the Highlands.
These are just some examples of the good quality careers and economic activity that upgrading the grid is generating.
As a business, we also expect to invest more than £100m in community benefit funding – including around £35m from the Spittal–Loch Buidhe–Beauly overhead line alone – and we are determined to ensure that the funding goes to priority projects of local people.
We have plans to devote a similar sum to nature restoration across our network – making SSEN Transmission the biggest single investor in nature in Scotland – and support the delivery of 1,000 permanent homes for people in the north of Scotland as a legacy of our construction projects.
It’s all about working in partnership to achieve a win-win: winning clean power and energy security for the country, and winning jobs and economic opportunities for the Highlands.
Blog post by SSEN Transmission’s Managing Director, Rob McDonald