A major new campaign has been launched to position Aberdeen and the North-east of Scotland as Europe’s capital of energy excellence.
True North Advisors has launched the initiative to change the way the region’s energy story is told across the world, showcasing the extraordinary concentration of people, businesses, skills and technologies based in the North-east.
The campaign launches today with a special Press & Journal supplement celebrating companies and individuals working across oil and gas, offshore wind, hydrogen, carbon capture, subsea, decommissioning, engineering and emerging energy technologies.
It will be supported by a dedicated storytelling website and a national digital campaign designed to take the North-east’s energy story to audiences across the country.
The campaign will also shine a spotlight on the region’s growing strength in subsea robotics, autonomous systems and marine technology, where expertise developed over decades in the North Sea is increasingly being deployed in industries ranging from offshore renewables to defence and maritime security.
The North-east is home to the highest concentration of energy supply chain companies anywhere in the UK and a significant proportion of the world’s subsea engineering capability.
Around three quarters of Scotland’s existing and planned offshore wind capacity also sits off the North-east coast, while the region is home to organisations including Offshore Energies UK, the Net Zero Technology Centre, Global Underwater Hub and the National Decommissioning Centre.
True North said the campaign would proudly celebrate the North-east’s oil and gas heritage and its future in the industry, while telling the much wider story of a region with capabilities spanning almost every part of the energy system.
Geoff Aberdein, Managing Partner of True North Advisors, a public affairs, strategic communications and marketing firm headquartered in Aberdeen, said the North-east has a remarkable story to tell.
'For more than 50 years, this region has helped power the country, but what we have built here goes far beyond the oil and gas we have produced,' he said.
'We have created one of the most extraordinary concentrations of energy, engineering and subsea expertise anywhere in the world. We have companies headquartered here which are global leaders in their fields, technologies developed here which are deployed around the world, and people whose skills are sought after internationally.
'We are enormously proud of our oil and gas heritage and equally ambitious about the industry’s future here. But our strength is that we do all energy, and we do it to an unrivalled standard.
'Whether it is oil and gas, offshore wind, subsea robotics, hydrogen, carbon capture, decommissioning or the technologies which will shape the energy system of the future, the North-east has an enormous amount to offer.
'We want Aberdeen and the North-east to be recognised as Europe’s capital of energy excellence, and today marks the start of us telling that story much more confidently.'
The campaign will seek to reach political, business and public audiences beyond the North-east, challenging perceptions of Aberdeen as simply a mature oil and gas centre and demonstrating the strategic value of the skills and industrial capability concentrated in the region.
Maggie McGinlay, CEO of ETZ Ltd, one of the organisations featured in the new campaign added: “This is about more than changing perceptions. It is about recognising and protecting a national asset.
'The expertise built in the North-east over generations would be extraordinarily difficult to recreate somewhere else. It gives Scotland and the UK an enormous competitive advantage across energy, engineering and subsea technology.
'We should be proud of it, we should be ambitious about its future and we should be much louder about telling the rest of the world what we have here.'
Source: True North Advisors
