Holyrood Lobby
Micro-renewables - it’s all about Scottish teamwork
It was a privilege to have Enterprise and Energy Minister Jim Mather MSP with us last month to officially open our new Scottish Environmental Technologies Training Centre (see cover story). The most important reason to celebrate the
Although miro-renewables is not a ‘reserved’ matter, the chaps in Whitehall are behaving as though it is by. By David Wright. As with many other aspects of life, we already
arrival of this unique training environment is not the significant investments made by all concerned in terms of time and money, although those are certainly substantial. The big story is one of Scottish teamwork. Although located at The Walled Garden, the new
SET Training Centre will also serve the plumbing, heating and ventilating sectors and the three lead trade associations (SELECT, SNIPEF and HVCA) will deliver National Occupational Standards established by SummitSkills leading to qualifications approved by the Scottish Qualifications Authority and all of this strongly supported by Skills Development Scotland. Leading energy company Vaillant has facilitated this with significant contributions in terms of design and equipment The close involvement of skills triumvirate SummitSkills, SQA and SDS makes a statement about Scotland’s commitment to training and also demonstrates Scotland’s ability to draw people together to get the right result for Scotland. All of this happened because Mr Mather
approached the Scottish Building Services industry some two years ago with concern over the number of complaints being received about Department for Energy and Climate Change’s Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS). Without MCS, UK and Scottish Government incentives for micro- renewables could not be unlocked. Unfortunately, MCS was demonstrably unfit for purpose. Out of 3,000+ installer companies in Scotland, only 59 were MCS certified. The reasons for this were clear. The MSC Quality Management system was inappropriate for small to medium firms and it was laden with cost, bureaucracy and duplication. The industry in Scotland concluded that MCS is a barrier to the development of micro-renewables in Scotland.
have arrangements in Scotland that are different from down south. Scotland’s Building Standards System already presents an ideal ‘off the shelf’ alternative to MCS using the robust Certification of Construction provisions. Unfortunately, DECC remain un-persuaded that our Building Standard-based alternative is equivalent to MCS. They are right in some ways, in that the Scottish proposal is much less costly, less bureaucratic, simpler and based on sets of required skills.
Oh, and it also meets the requirements of the
European Renewable Energy Directive – something that MCS does not. At present, it is not quite true to say that the issue of micro-renewables is a reserved matter, but it might as well be because the DECC rules only make provision for micro-renewables payments where MCS is involved. DECC control MCS and, at present, does not acknowledge the equivalence of the Scottish Building Standards- based alternative. DECC knows that Scotland believes it has a superior system which would accelerate the take- up rate on micro-renewables but which would expose MCS’s European non-compliance. So you would think we’d be delighted to hear in mid July that DECC had launched a consultation on Microgeneration Strategy. Not so. The consultation announces its intention as “to promote microgen technologies in England only” but then invites “those with the greatest knowledge” to contribute to the development of a strategy. We should be reminding our chaps in Whitehall Place that although micro-renewables is not a ‘reserved’ matter, they are behaving as though it is by controlling the purse strings through MCS. A consultation in England only is unlikely to flush out the sensible alternative sitting across the border. My message to DECC is “come on guys, you’re a UK agency, so come on up among Scotland’s solar panels and photo voltaics and take a look at the view from here.”
David Wright head of external affairs, SELECT
“This
demonstrates Scotland’s
commitment to training and its ability to draw people together to get the right result for Scotland.”
August 2010 • CABLEtalk19
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