Objections have been raised with the UK government as foreign companies have cleaned up on green energy supply contacts exporting green electricity from Scotland to England that has been described as the Great Grid Upgrade 'carve up'.
Concerns have been raised with Energy Secretary Ed Miliband as it can be revealed more than £60bn of contracts have gone to firms based or owned abroad to create a British energy grid of the future to meet 2035 decarbonization targets.
They include billions in deals exclusively with companies based abroad to take green energy produced on Scotland to England.
The Herald on Sunday can reveal that all of the key supply contracts have so far been awarded to firms that are owned outwith the UK and Scotland.
The big upgrade is a sprawling array of schemes both in progress and in the pipeline worth £80bn and include four that will export electricity from Scotland to England. Costs are expected to go even higher.
It is estimated five times more electricity will come from Scottish offshore by 2035 than will be used in Scotland during peak times.
And the largest overhaul of electricity network in generations has been partly designed to transfer renewable energy generated in Scotland to demand centres south of the border.
But it has led to concerns that the lucrative profits and jobs from the huge investment which energy bill payers will ultimately pay for are also going overseas.
The GMB union, a major donor of the Labour Party which holds the reins of UK Government power is leading a charge to push for changes on what has been described as a "carve up scandal".
The 'unprecedented' upgrade which began taking shape in 2023 is aimed at building a new transmission infrastructure, to bring clean, green energy from where it is generated to where it is needed by homes and businesses.
New cables need to be built to bring electricity from renewable generating sources, such as offshore wind farms, to the places where that electricity is needed, such as cities.
It will allow renewable sources of power, such as solar farms, to be connected to the grid and transported across the country.
Projects are being overseen in the main by the National Grid - the London-based privatised owner of the power lines.
Initial schemes are due to run over five years to March 2029 which the National Grid say will eventually be paid for by bill payers and will "cement our position as a leader in energy transition".
Electrical infrastructure specialists Prysmian, based in Milan, Italy, has been the main beneficiary getting contracts worth £2.35bn to supply cable.
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A consortium made up of US-based GE Vernova’s Grid Solutions and Greece-based Mytilineos Energy and Metals has secured a £1bn contract to and construct HVDC converter stations. These stations are critical for converting electricity between high-voltage direct current and alternating current, facilitating seamless integration into the existing grid infrastructure.
Another consortium of Swiss-based Hitachi Energy, ultimately owned by the Japanese electronics company of the same name and the UK construction company BAM, ultimately owned by Netherlands-based Royal BAM Group has been awarded a contract to supply and construct two HDVC converter stations in a deal believed to be worth at least £700m.
It comes as the National Grid announced £59bn of further UK contracts for the HVDC supply chain - the underground and sub sea cables needed for net zero - with all those contracts also going to companies based abroad.
And unions are concerned that there is no sign of creating any of the long promised green jobs in Scotland and the UK.
Prysmian, GE Vernova and Hitachi Energy have all benefitted again.
Also benefitting are a consortium of Belgium's Jan De Nul and its Greek consortium partner Hellenic Cables, South Korea-based LS Cable & System, Denmark-based NKT Cables, Japanese firm Sumitomo Electric, Taihan Cable & Solution from South Korea, Mitsubishi Electric from Japan and Germany's Siemens Energy. Contracts were secured for a five-year period, with the potential to extend for a further three years.
Those supply frameworks are aimed at 15 projects that are either certain or anticipated, with some further unidentified projects anticipated to be included. They include projects such as two energy transmission schemes sending electricity from Scotland to England called Eastern Green Link 3 and Eastern Green Link 4.
It comes in the wake of the Labour government saying they will create more than 650,000 energy jobs by 2030 with its green investment plans.
But unions believe that the contract awards have delivered "another broken promise" on renewables manufacturing jobs.
A National Wealth Fund is one of the biggest single items in Labour’s pledge to stimulate the economy and boost efforts to tackle climate change, alongside Great British Energy, its planned energy generation company expected to be based in Aberdeen.
Gary Smith, the GMB general secretary said that there was concern over the benefits to the benefits to the UK from the supply projects going abroad.
“It is very difficult to understand how this squares with the UK Government’s stated intention to create 650,000 new jobs in clean power," he said.
“They have had, and ignored, any number of wake-up calls but few have been as loud and urgent as this one.
“This is work of scale and crucial national importance and should be supporting supply chains and creating jobs in the UK.
“There are clear steps to be taken to ensure our developers have the necessary support, our workers have the necessary skills and our supply chains have the necessary capability to win these contracts but we need to take them now.
“Honesty demands ministers admit the vast majority of grid renewal work over the next five years will go abroad and so will the jobs."
Two of the earliest upgrade projects are in Scotland.
The first is the £2.5bn Eastern Green Link 1 (EGL1) project a collaborative effort between National Grid Electricity Transmission and SP Energy Networks, which is ultimately owned by the Spanish utility group Iberdrola. This involves the development of a HDVC electrical superhighway that will span 120 miles from Torness in East Lothian, Scotland, to Hawthorn Pit in County Durham, England. This infrastructure is designed to transmit renewable energy sufficient to power over two million UK homes.
A ceremony to mark the start of the EGL1 construction project was held just last month.
The second is the £4.3bn Eastern Green Link 2 (EGL2) which involves running a similar cable running 270 miles between Peterhead and Drax in North Yorkshire.
It was given the green light by the energy regulator Ofgem in August 2024, and on completion, it is expected to be the longest HVDC cable in the UK, with the capacity to supply electricity to a further two million homes.
There are further proposals for Eastern Link 3 and Eastern Green Link 4 – two new primarily offshore high voltage electricity links and associated onshore infrastructure sending energy from Scotland to England.
The National Grid say the huge costs of the upgrade is gradually passed to customers through their electricity bills over around 40 years.
On UK jobs a source told The Herald: "Although we don't have the full [numbers] as a total, we are actively engaging the supply chain."
Unions have previously raised concerns that Scotland has become the 'poor relation' of the UK over the green job bonanza with employment per £1m of turnover last year at its lowest level since records began.
The Scottish Trades Union Congress raised its concerns as analysis of official estimates last year showed Scotland produced two jobs per £1m of turnover in 2022 - the lowest level since official estimates began in 2014 when it was at around four jobs per £1m.
Over ten years ago, the Scottish Government were championing the desire to be the green energy capital of Europe with around 28,000 jobs in offshore wind alone.
But across the UK, the low carbon and renewable energy sector was producing four jobs per £1m of turnover in 2022 - and has in recent years been consistently higher than Scotland.
Meanwhile, Scotland's green economy balance of trade, measured by exports minus imports, had at that time widened for the first time since 2018.
The STUC has previously warned that Scotland has been left flailing behind in job creation for offshore and onshore wind.
There was concern that data from last year showed that jobs in the low carbon and renewable energy sector (LCRE) on Scotland had dropped by 13% in the year from 29,700 to 25,700 - while turnover had soared by 47% from £8.853bn to £12.992bn.
But Scottish Renewables, the trade body, said at the time that a report from Scottish Renewables and the Fraser of Allander Institute showed Scotland’s renewable energy industry and its supply chain supported more than 42,000 jobs and over £10.1bn of output in 2021.
It has continued to questioned the veracity of the official numbers saying that it highlights "considerable uncertainty in its estimates".
A spokesperson for National Grid said: “National Grid’s investment in the UK electricity network will support around 55,000 UK jobs by 2030, boosting the economy, supporting domestic businesses, and helping to build a robust energy network that benefits consumers.
“We are proud to work with many UK-based suppliers, but we do operate in a global supply chain market to deliver our infrastructure projects. This is driven by both Government procurement rules, which set out requirements to neither favour nor exclude suppliers based on nationality, and the availability and scale of the equipment we require.”
A UK Government spokesman said: “Our Clean Power Action Plan sets out how we will deliver a new era of clean electricity, with the most ambitious reforms to the country’s energy system in a generation.
“British workers and industry are essential to that plan, as we build a secure energy system that can bring down bills for households and businesses for good.
“Great British Energy and the National Wealth Fund will help build the supply chains needed to support a new era of clean homegrown power, bringing jobs and investment across the country.”
