The text below is the transcript from the '1 WHITELEE NET ZERO' video. An audio-described version of the video is also available.
Video Title: WHITELEE NET ZERO
LAURA: Hi, I'm Laura Young, also known as Less Waste Laura, and for the past few years, I've been trying to live an environmentally conscious lifestyle and advocate for climate justice. One of the major causes of climate change is how we create and consume energy, and I want to know what we are doing about this. How are we preparing to generate the energy we need for a low carbon future? How will this tie in with my values of climate justice and not only provide the energy we need, but at the same time look after our natural world?
Glasgow is about to host the most important climate conference this world has ever seen. That conference is COP 26 or conference of the parties as world leaders come together to agree global action on climate change. But what does net zero really mean? And are energy companies really ready to deliver? Come with me on a journey to discover more about the future of energy and why COP 26 is so important to our planet and the net zero debate.
I have travelled just 16 miles from the middle of Glasgow, and I'm now on the outskirts of the UK's largest onshore wind farm. Whitelee is so big, it spans across three councils and has nine different landowners. I have arranged to meet Dr.Sam Gardiner, who is ScottishPowers head of climate change and sustainability, as I want to understand what net zero really means, and who better to explain this to me than Sam?
Hi, Sam.
SAM: Hi, Laura. Good to see you.
LAURA: Nice to see you, too. How are you doing?
SAM: All right. How was your ride?
LAURA: Oh, great. Good journey.
SAM: It's not too windy. Not as windy as it often is.
LAUAR: No, it's not. But it made me realize just how big Whitelee is, and it's something like over 200 wind turbines?
SAM: Yeah, it's massive. It's really, really impressive. Each one of these turbines is over 140 meters high which, in itself, is pretty amazing. And if you look at them, you know, the way the blades are turning doesn't look all that fast, but actually they're about 150 miles per hour as they go round. So, this beautiful sight that we can see is right now powering a big chunk of Scotland, and it's it's really, impressive.
LAURA: That's amazing, and so how do wind farms play into tackling climate change?
SAM: So in Scotland, in 2020, about 97% of our entire electricity demand was met by renewables. Historically, that would have been met by fossil fuels. Wind farms, solar power, hydro, they all have a hugely important role to play if we are to follow through on our commitments and prevent the very worst impacts of climate change.
LAURA: And what does that mean? What are we aiming for when it comes to our energy transition?
SAM: So, Scotland is a target to be net zero by 2045, the UK has target for 2050. And what that means is by that point, we need to make sure that any emissions that haven't been cut are sequestered or absorbed or taken out to the atmosphere. But what's really important is that that the focus cannot be on that offsetting bit of the net, but in the immediate term, the next 10 years. Our responsibility is to really accelerate the emissions reduction. So we have to halve our footprint in the next decade globally. That's what we need to be doing. At ScottishPower we've got targets to do that. We've set our own science-based targets that are going to really drive an acceleration in how we cut our emissions. But that long term, I guess, is net zero. And we just have to make sure that when we get to that point, we've removed pretty much, as much as we possibly can from our carbon footprint.
LAURA: And that seems really important. Is this all backed up by science?
SAM: It's absolutely backed up by science. It's backed up by decades and decades of science. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, published its report, which is signed off by all governments of the world. That's over 700 scientists coming together and saying very, very clearly, unequivocally that humans are causing climate change is a reality. We're locked into a certain level of change. But every action we take now to make sure that impact is less damaging to people around the world.
LAURA: You've mentioned net zero and the IPCC report, but something else I keep hearing about is COP 26. What’s the significance of that, Whitelee, and renewable energy?
SAM: So, COP 26 is going to be a big deal. It stands for Conference of the Parties to what's called the Kyoto Protocol. And it's when the world will come together and agree what actions it's going to take in order to accelerate our collective response to climate change. It's hugely, hugely important because we have to move forward together. We have to support the developing nations who have done the least to kind of contribute to climate change. And we as the developing world have to provide leadership, ambition, technology, investment in order to drive those emissions reductions down and Glasgow COP will be critical to kind of firing a starting gun and going on in what we hope will be a far, far greater kind of pace of change in the next nine years or so.
LAURA: So Glasgow's important, COP’s important, but what about ScottishPower Renewables in all of this?
SAM: If we are to meet our targets both here in Scotland and across the UK, we need more of these wind farms like we see here at Whitelee. But not only that, we need to see those wind farms combined just as ScottishPower Renewables are doing with all the technologies. So green hydrogen, which we're seeing here at Whitelee, solar power, bringing all of these technologies together in order to remove our reliance on fossil fuels and find ways to power our homes and our transport. So, we've taken fossil fuels largely out of the electricity generation in Scotland, for the most part, next stage and a slightly more challenging stage. We need to take them out of our homes. So a vast majority of us burn fossil fuels every day in our homes to heat our homes. And the vast majority of us still drive around in petrol, diesel cars. Both of those can be replaced by clean electricity, which can come from wind farms such as this one here at Whitelee.
LAURA: Thank you so much for telling me a bit more about Whitelee.
SAM :I'll have to take one for going home.
LAURA: You can have one of these.
SAM: The soup was lovely. I’ll them in the bin. Yeah, I just hope you have a great ride home.
LAURA: Thank you so much and enjoy COP when it comes.
SAM: Maybe see you at COP.
LAURA: Yeah, absolutely.
SAM: All right, see you. Bye.
LAURA: Let's face it, I'm standing in the middle of a 21st century power station. I was born not far from here and growing up, I remembered this pre-wind farm, mooreland, as a fairly unused and desolate place. Now, there is a whole new ecosystem, and it has seen the restoration of hectares of previously commercially forested peatland habitat. A new community coming to our visitor centre since its doors opened. And a new place to enjoy outdoor life with 130 kilometres of outdoor tracks and an amazing range of outdoor activities. I'm going to be visiting some very interesting places on my journey. I'm meeting a range of experts that will help me understand more about Whitelee, its people and learn about the ecological management that goes around the 215 turbines. I'm not sure my bike has the range to cover every kilometre of track, so some pedal power might be involved as I head to one of the base viewpoints on the wind farm. Join me next time, as I find out more.