THE latest developments at Hargreaves Resources highlight faith in the potential of renewable energy projects in Scotland on the part of powerful players. They also underline the challenges involved in developing such assets.
Hargreaves has won support from the Green Investment Bank for plans to develop a big energy from waste plant at Grangemouth soon after the funder was bought by Australian giant Macquarie. It has recruited Alex Lambie, who built Welsh Power into a £1bn business, to develop the energy projects it is spinning off into a new subsidiary, Brockwell.
The projects include plans to develop wind farms on former open cast mine sites in South Lanarkshire. Mr Lambie believes the projects in Scotland could provide the foundations of a big business.
However, Hargreaves founded Brockwell at least partly to simplify the group and limit the demands on its capital.
Developing wind farms and the like takes time. It can tie up lots of capital while markets evolve in ways that may not be helpful.
In August, Hargreaves said its key wind farm sites benefited from high wind speeds but market conditions and prices did not then allow their commercial development.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel