Mike Macleod, the Scottish Labour & Scottish Co-operative Party Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Orkney, has condemned the SNP Scottish Government decision to terminate funding for Wave Energy Scotland (WES), as reported in The Herald.
Mike Macleod said:
“This is an incredibly short-sighted decision, which will cost jobs in Orkney and elsewhere and could even leave the Scottish Government open to a claim for damages.”
“Everyone except the SNP realises, if you don’t plant acorns, you’re never going to get a forest. I call on Robert Leslie to petition the First Minister to reverse this decision.”
Wave Energy Scotland (WES) was established by the SNP Scottish Government in 2014.
WES serves as the leading organisation dedicated to addressing the technical challenges within the wave energy sector. As a subsidiary of Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), WES is committed to facilitating research and development initiatives aimed at expediting advancements in wave energy technologies and their associated subsystems. – Wave Energy Scotland.
First Minister John Swinney is due to arrive in Kirkwall this weekend.
According to the Labour candidate if press reports are correct, WES had asked for £3.08 million over two years. If WES cannot secure funding, it will have to make its approximately twelve employees redundant. Even worse, WES will have to leave the EuropeWave programme, which is co-funded by the Scottish Government, Basque Government and European Commission. Scotland’s Mocean Energy has a contract to set up a prototype in Orkney later this year. Withdrawal from EuropeWave could result in claims for damages by affected contractors and claw-back of the European Commission’s grant.
Scotland has been a world leader in the development of marine renewables, both tidal and wave. Edinburgh University’s FloWave test tank ” is the most advanced wave and current tank in the world and the first large circular tank with 360 degree wave and current control. The £12 million facility was completed in August 2013 after 3 years of construction and has been at the forefront of ocean energy research ever since, testing devices from wave, wind, tidal and ocean technology sectors and providing essential ocean research.”
An economic impact assessment report about wave energy in Scotland published in 2025 stated:
Projects in the UK could generate over £4.2bn in economic benefit to the Scottish economy by 2050, and support over 9,700 high-value jobs in 2050, with significant additional potential from exports.
To ensure that these deployments are led by Scottish companies and organisations, establishing a highly competitive and modernised domestic supply chain is increasingly important. This will help to ensure that Scotland remains the location of choice for prospective tidal stream and wave energy developers to develop, build, deploy and maintain their devices.
This is an unfolding story – updates to follow.
Elections to the Scottish Parliament take place on Thursday 7 May.
Fiona Grahame
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