Scots are wondering why they’re looking out of the window at the biggest windfarms in Europe, and down at the kitchen table at the biggest energy bills in Europe, says Herald columnist Andy Maciver. Surely, the SNP, Labour and Scottish Conservatives can do better than this?

If you’re feeling in any way pessimistic about your country, do not, whatever you do, go to www.nbim.no. It’s the homepage of Norges Bank Investment Management - Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, built by the geological jackpot that this cold little country of five million people won 50 years ago.

The value of the fund ticks up on the website (it’s at just under 20 trillion Krone, I think; there are so many numbers it’s hard to be sure).

The ticker sits there, passive aggressively trolling us here in Scotland. We’re another cold little country of five million people who hit a geological jackpot 50 years ago, but while the Norwegians spend a legislatively agreed portion of the interest on the fund (they never spend the core capital; that’s rainy day money for future generations), here we can’t buy a ferry.

We can’t put the eggs back in the shell now, of course, but we can certainly avoid cracking any more. This week’s Offshore Europe energy conference in Aberdeen heard from energy researchers DNV, who told delegates that the UK will need the equivalent of 16 billion barrels of oil between now and 2050 to fill the gap between our domestic demand, and the domestic supply generated by our renewable energy.

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Labour loves nuclear power. The SNP hates it - and........

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