Siemens have said they’re delaying a final decision until early next year, although that’s not to say it couldn’t come sooner.
The local planning issues are pretty much resolved and the main sticking point is the government's inability to formulate a coherent energy policy and restrain morons like John Hayes and the Chancellor. Siemens was one of several major renewables firms who signed that open letter a few weeks back saying that the government’s mixed messages on renewable energy has created uncertainty enough to put major investment plans in doubt. A couple of biomass schemes in Lincolnshire have been cancelled since then, although another one in Hull is apparently to go ahead, or so it was reported last week, and today’s news about the wind turbine plant in Scotland might also be a sign that the problem isn’t terminal. I see the Yorkshire Post are spinning that as a blow for the Humber, but as far as I know there was never any suggestion it would be built here. The energy bill – when published – should clear some of the confusion for better or for worse.
On the credit side, the Humber Local Enterprise Partnership has been given a big wad of cash to help close the deal, and senior politicians from the PM downwards have been making positive noises about the project. Whether that’s enough to offset Osborne and his minions’ poisonous anti-renewables antics is doubtful, though.
There’s a lot of cynicism in Hull about the whole thing – in probably the UK’s most cynical city anyway – and quite a lot of people never really believed it would happen from the off. I’d hate to see them proved right. More importantly, we really need the Siemens deal. Unemployment in the city is way above the national average, and although I’ve had the sense that things have improved a bit recently, with more property changing hands round my way and several places that have stood empty for a while being refurbished and reopened, all the major headlines about the local economy are bad. Seven Seas is closing by 2015, the Comet centre is almost certainly for the chop now the firm’s in administration, a big factory in Barton on Humber is shutting (despite the fact that its owners took a big wad of government money to build the damn thing only 30 years ago!), several other major industrial employers are shedding staff and the city council has to lose another 240 people next year. Times are pretty grim. The Siemens deal could change that profoundly. It’s what Hull hasn’t had for decades: a foothold in a growth industry. It’s a huge project in its own right, and would very probably help to attract more firms in the sector to the city and the region.
Tbh I’m seriously worried, and also bloody furious with the government. Even if you’ve your head jammed sufficiently firmly in the sand to ignore all of the evidence about climate change, renewable energy makes huge sense in terms of energy security and offsetting inevitable future rises in the price of fossil fuels. Moreover, the ‘green economy’ is one of the few bits of the economy that’s actually growing and generating jobs and major investments at the moment, and in parts of the country that badly need it. The sheer stupidity of the Tory right in putting all of that in jeopardy beggars belief.
No amount of cajolery...
