Selling Pollution To The Chinese

Photo by Kenny Smith/Scottish Government

Scotland rolled out the red carpet to the Chinese this weekend, as we played host to the Vice Premier Li Keqiang. The newspapers and the BBC have all reported the good news that a new "green energy deal" has been agreed between the two countries that will see Scottish technology exported to China.

Unfortunately, there was a distinct lack of details. All of the reports I read sounded remarkably similar, with one paragraph reading almost word-for-word in the Scotsman, the Herald and the BBC.

So, the journalists just reworded a press release which was lacking in detail, and repeated that "Green Energy" headline.

But what exactly are we selling them? The clue comes in the words about one of the companies involved. W2E Engineering (who don't appear to have a website, according to Google)

specialises in generating electricity from domestic refuse

And what of the other company involved, SHBV Cochran? They do at least have a website, where you can discover that they produce "combustion burners".

In other words, unless I'm completely mistaken, the "Green Energy" that we have sold to China, and which is being trumpeted as renewable and sustainable in the press, is in fact waste incinerators.

Which are not Green, Renewable or Sustainable.

It's a pity that the journalists who merely copied out the press release didn't stop, think and google for 30 seconds, instead of falling for the hype. They could have had a whole other angle on the story.