Renewable resources will make Scotland the Silicon Valley of marine energy in the same way that hi-tech industries transformed Northern California, the First Minister has told an American audience.

Alex Salmond was making the keynote speech of his American trade mission to the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco, the oldest public affairs forum in the United States.

In a speech entitled 'Scotland: A Good Global Citizen', he said that Scotland’s growing marine energy industry will turn the country into an international centre of excellence , with potentially huge economic and environmental rewards.


Mr Salmond said: "We are ambitious for the future, both for ourselves and what we can contribute to the world."

The First Minister said that the part of Northern California that became the Silicon Valley powerhouse developed from a "community of technical scholars", similar to the current marine energy sector in Scotland.

He pointed out that Scotland's twelve major universities have formed the Energy Technology Partnership and that Strathclyde University is a "hub" for research into offshore wind energy.

Mr Salmond said: "There are more different types of wave and tidal devices in the waters around Scotland than in the rest of the world combined. We possess 10% of Europe’s wave power resources and 25% of its offshore wind and tidal resources - all with only 1 per cent of the EU population. As hi-tech industries concentrated in Silicon Valley and transformed the economic landscape of Northern California, so marine energy will do for Scotland."

(NE)