This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter.
Over four hundred jobs, it was reported last week, are under threat at the Mitsubishi Electric heat pump factory in Livingston.
Three months ago, I toured that same factory and watched as employees involved in the complex process of putting together the complex units that are heat pumps, slotted elements into place on assembly lines, toiled around fiery turntables, passing flaming brazers over copper parts and installed new factory equipment.
These were jobs and livelihoods that looked like the future, part of a growing green industry, and it’s shocking to hear that months later this Living site is engaged in a redundancy process which could see a quarter of the workforce go.
Why, given Scotland is on the brink of a Heat in Buildings Bill and a rapid transition to heat pumps as a key technology in decarbonising our heating, is our major heat pump factory shutting down? The answer given by Mitsubishi Electric is what’s happening in the market in Europe. In its statement about the redundancies, the company said, “Despite seeing some growth in the UK market, the majority of our production at the site has been for mainland Europe, where there has been a widespread downturn in demand. This has led to the extremely difficult decision to begin the consultation process.”
Mitsubishi’s factory was originally an air conditioning manufacturing plant, but 80% of its product is now heat pumps.
(Image: Herald Design)
Around 79% of that, I was told, on my visit, was exported to Europe - mostly Spain, France and Germany. The much faster uptake in those countries than the UK was attributed to the high price of electricity in the UK compared to gas, the so-called spark gap’. In France the cost of electricity is two times........