December 11, 2025

Scotland needs independence to channel its energy

When we launched our “Stop the Scottish Energy Bill Rip-Off” campaign back in September, we said something very simple: Scotland is an energy-rich nation being treated as an energy cash cow. The UK system is built to protect investors’ returns and to funnel Scotland’s cheap power south while Scots customers are charged more to access the grid that carries our energy.

So it is great to see that the SNP are now echoing our message - that this is one of the biggest transfers from the pockets of ordinary folk to the coffers of the super-rich, it damages Scotland's economy and it's the root cause of the cost of living crisis.

The Scottish Government is seeking to open the eyes of Scottish voters to the reality of what is going on, and we congratulate them.

But there is only so much they can do to change the situation. Energy is a reserved power. Only with Scotland’s independence can we use the levers of power to give Scotland the energy it needs, at a price it can afford - to build a better future.

Scotland’s energy future would be vastly different under independence. Here are three key points:

1 - Focus on Scotland - under independence we would hear no more about “average” fuel bills that are based on the English average.

When the Unionist media talks about the “UK average” for energy bills - that is not a Scottish average. They are using an English average which works out at £1,758. The average for Scotland has not been formally calculated but it would be much higher.

About one in five Scottish households does not have access to the gas network. Areas off the gas grid include:

Shetland & Orkney: 100%
Western Isles: 88%
Highland Council area: 62%
Argyll & Bute: 56%

The UK chooses to load a lot of additional charges for grid maintenance and building nuclear power stations etc onto electricity bills rather than pay them from tax revenues or evenly spread the cost between electricity and gas - even though wind power has reduced the need for more gas plants. That outdated thinking punishes Scots and means we pay more.

Scots also pay some of the highest standing charges in the UK. In winter, and as Scotland’s temperatures are colder, we need to spend more on heating.

The Citizens Advice Bureau Scotland reported that:

“Regional variations in standing charges disadvantage Scottish consumers relative to their counterparts in other areas. These variations also impose an effective premium on people living in rural communities.”

The average energy bill in much of rural Scotland is more like £4,000 a year and fuel poverty now impacts more than 1 in 3 Scottish households.

That means a third of Scots have to spend more than 10% of their income on energy. In England, it is more like one in ten.

There are 2.4 million households in Scotland. About 400,000 do not have access to the gas grid and pay £1000 more in energy bills a year. That is a much higher proportion than England, where it is about 12%.

In addition, Scottish households pay some of the highest standing charges in the UK. So if you use those numbers to make an average it is going to be higher than the UK average.

Why should our political debate be dominated by figures that relate to another country?

2 - Scotland has been here before. Now all we can do is watch as the UK pushes the oil and gas sector into accelerated collapse instead of the just transition we were promised.

Scotland has been here before and watched our energy resources mismanaged - twice. The first was with coal. Whole communities were destroyed by the brutal closure of the mines.

Next time with oil and gas we were promised a just transition. But that would take long-term strategy and investment - but that is just not forthcoming from Westminster.

Instead we could only watch as Chancellor Rachel Reeves pushed the industry over a financial cliff edge in the budget last month.

According to a report in the Financial Times, £15 billion of investment is now at “very high risk” of being cancelled. The North East stands to lose one in six jobs. So much for the “just transition.”

An independent Scotland could do what Norway and Denmark are achieving instead. Their oil and gas reserves are supporting European energy resilience - helping them to reduce their dependence on Russian gas. Meanwhile, these countries which retained a big public stake in the industry are investing the profits in the just transition and rapidly accelerating to net zero.

It has been proven that in the 1970s, the UK Government hid the value of North Sea oil and gas from Scots for fear of boosting independence support. Instead, it threw open our reserves to multinationals who went in hard and fast, for maximum short-term profit, but damaging the fields in the process. Norway took a more patient approach and has much more left in reserve.

Now the UK government is walking away as communities are left to deal with the crash. Instead of using oil and gas revenues, like Norway, to manage a planned transition and anchor the renewables industry in the North East, Westminster is repeating the pattern.

They make Scotland’s resources available for private plunder in the short term, take the tax receipts, and then slam Scotland’s “weak” economy when the damage shows up in GDP figures.

3 - An independent Scotland would benefit from its energy surplus

An independent Scotland would be starting from a position most countries can only dream of: a huge surplus of cheap, clean energy. We already generate more renewable electricity than we use, yet under the UK’s privatised grid and single GB pricing system that surplus is treated as a problem to be constrained rather than an asset to be valued.

Since the start of 2025, the UK is estimated to have spent over £1.3bn turning wind farms off – the vast majority of them north of the border.

In July, the UK turned its back on zonal pricing which would have given Scotland cheaper energy than the south of England. In a nutshell they feared the political fallout of that. But sticking with a one UK price means that more money has to be spent on turning off wind turbines.

A cheaper price would allow Scotland to use low-cost electricity to cut bills by more than a third for households and businesses, and to give Scottish firms a structural cost advantage in the way Ireland used low corporation tax.

Instead, the UK’s choice means more pylons criss-crossing the country to take the energy south - “where it's needed”. The UK gov just sneers at the idea that Scotland could attract high-energy businesses as Iceland and Sweden do.

An independent Scotland would have a choice about where to sell its energy surplus. Industry-backed research from the Net Zero Technology Centre suggests a “hydrogen backbone” – a pipeline from Flotta in Orkney to Emden in Germany, with spurs to Sullom Voe, Cromarty and St Fergus – could support a £26 billion-a-year export market by the 2040s.

Scotland has the natural resources we need. What we lack is the ability to borrow and invest at scale, and to strike long-term international deals in our own name. We are an energy rich nation that is forbidden from being energy rich by its connection to broken Britain and its failing energy system.

Conclusion

When we say Stop the Scottish Energy Bill Rip-Off, we are saying something bigger than “shave a few pounds off the price cap”.

We are saying that Scotland’s energy should serve Scotland’s people, not be plundered and priced from somewhere else. Our policy discussions shouldn’t be informed by data from a neighbouring country.

Our renewable energy future should not go the way of the oil and gas industry - or the coal industry - with communities thrown on the scrap heap after the short-term extraction grab is over.

Scotland should have a choice about where and how to export its energy surplus and its citizens should benefit in the way those of similar-sized Scandinavian countries do.

The choice in front of us is clear: keep being an energy cash cow inside a broken UK system, or take control of our own resources and use them to build a fairer, warmer, more prosperous country.

1 - Focus on Scotland - under independence we would hear no more about “average” fuel bills that are based on the English average.

2 - Scotland has been here before. Now all we can do is watch as the UK pushes the oil and gas sector into accelerated collapse instead of the just transition we were promised.

3 - An independent Scotland would benefit from its energy surplus

Conclusion

Further Reading from BiS on Scotland Energy