Ready to lead the energy revolution
FOR the third time in 70 years the Highlands stands on the brink of an energy revolution.
In the post-war years the hydro-dam programme gave us power from the glens, lighting up not just the Highlands, but Scotland’s towns and cities.
Then in the 1970s came the oil boom, bringing industry and skilled jobs to the north.
Now it is the turn of renewable energy, but Calum Davidson wants to see one major difference between this new energy boom and its predecessors: a legacy that will create benefits for the people of the Highlands and Islands.
Calum, the recently appointed director of energy and low carbon for Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), believes the region can become a world leader in the field of renewable energy, just as Aberdeen has with oil.
Renewable energy, especially in the form of land-based wind farms, has not been overwhelmingly welcomed, but Calum is naturally more concerned with the benefits wind and wave power will bring.
"This is just the latest energy revolution," he said.
"People tend to forget there was a huge outcry when the Foyers hydro dam was built in the 1880s and the same in the 1970s around oil. It’s not energy people are scared of, it’s change."
Calum has links to various parts of the HIE area. Born in Caithness, he spent some of his childhood in Shetland before completing his schooling at Inverness Royal Academy. For the last 30 years he has lived in the Black Isle where he and wife Ruth raised their three sons.
Perhaps this explains why Calum is passionate that the benefits of this new boom are spread around the north.
"This, to me, is kind of the dream job, having worked in development and been passionate about the Highlands and Islands all my working life," Calum declared.
"This is an industry that can only happen in places like the Highlands and Islands. You need waves and you need wind and, as everybody knows, we have them in abundance. That can be done very sympathetically. One thing is certain, the world is going to need electricity and the wild and stormy places of the world are going to be farmed for power. We need to know we are at the forefront of that."
Scotland has already got off to a good start with the Marine Energy Centre in Stromness, which is still the world’s only grid-connected wave and marine energy centre, and is already stimulating some additional development in Orkney.
"We have a number of companies in the Highlands who are now supported by large multi-nationals," Calum pointed out.
"The big challenge for us is to see as many Highlands and Islands companies are as involved as possible and take advantage of that by developing a range of skills. It’s not just metal-bashing. You need environmental experts like ornithologists — there’s a huge demand for counting birds, believe it or not — mariners, electricians and all kinds of support work."
In the short term, while tidal and wave power are still at the research stage, it is off-shore wind power that will bring benefits, including a £6 billion investment in the Moray Firth involving Scottish and Southern Energy and Spanish and Portuguese energy companies EDPR and Repsol.
Estimates suggest that around 300 high-value jobs could be secured for the area for the operations and maintenance required by these projects on a long-term basis.
The job of ensuring that these posts are filled by Highlanders and not imported experts begins early.
Not only is HIE working with the University of the Highlands and Islands, children as young as 10 are being encouraged to take an interest in science.
"In 10 years, they are going to be the workforce," Calum pointed out.
"The thing that keeps me awake at night is the possibility that all these projects will be serviced from Germany, Hull or Belfast. That’s a danger we really have to work on."
While the oil boom took crofters and fishermen and turned them into welders and roustabouts, we now have a service-dominated economy in the Highlands.
However, Calum has no difficulty in imagining someone who works in a call centre or retail moving into renewable energy.
"If you have a big turbine manufacturing centre in Easter Ross, which is one of our ambitions, it is going to be more like a car plant or aircraft manufacturer than a traditional factory," he said.
"I can easily see a young woman in her 20s moving into a manufacturing opportunity rather than thinking it’s a dirty job for young men."
Though his current role is a new one, Calum brings with him 25 years of experience in HIE, including heading the key sectors team, so he is already well versed in understanding how new technology can benefit the Highlands and Islands, including establishing a relationship with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the USA’s most famous universities.
"Companies in the Highlands tend to think of themselves as small, but take them over to MIT and they quickly realise: we are not a small company — we are a company based in Europe with a brilliant idea," he said.
"It’s about ambition and we already have some very good, very ambitious companies like Orion or Global Highland who are working in a global space and there are lots of smaller companies who are working towards the same opportunities."
These opportunities are not confined to businesses, Calum adds. Some communities have already made investments in renewable technology and use it to generate income or encourage further development and growth.
"We need to be just as mindful of opportunities for individual communities that happen to be beside a fast flowing bit of water," he said.
Wherever his job takes him, around the Highlands or across the Atlantic, Calum always has a camera to hand.
Having studied photography at Glasgow School of Art, not only can Calum’s photographs be found on Flickr, but he has his own website, www.calumdavidson.com, where his work can be seen and prints purchased.
He has also exhibited his work and found time to write an on-line photographer’s guide to his home village of Cromarty.
"Cromarty is interesting because it’s got such a great mix, this very old town surrounded by all this industry," he said. "I’ve also been making a photographic record of the restoration of the East Kirk. That was fascinating because again it was about the intervention of the 21st century on this very old church."
It is this juxtaposition of the modern with the landscape or history which most appeals to Calum’s photographic eye.
"Because I do like the intersection of the man-made world and the natural, I do have some fairly strong discussions with my neighbours and other photographers," he laughed.
"To me the Cromarty Firth looks empty if it doesn’t have an oil platform in sight.
"Most days I go out for a walk in the morning with a camera and find this is a good way of getting my mind ready and at night it’s a good way of unwinding after a day of different brain activity."
However, Calum the photographer and Calum the Highland business advocate are not so far apart.
"A lot of it is about creativity," he said. "With HIE it’s about coming up with creative opportunities.
"People sometimes say to me: you can photograph a really mundane subject and make it interesting. It’s the same thing in the day job: taking something mundane and seeing in it a great opportunity."