Gerald Gordon is president and chief executive officer of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. He is finishing up a visit to Scotland with the Fulbright program to consult on a plan for a region that will see the closing of a nuclear power plant that employs the bulk of the area’s knowledge base.
What is the economy like there?
The economy here has three legs agriculture, which is thriving; tourism, which focuses around golf, fishing and surfing; and professional jobs, which are mainly at Dounreay, the site of the nuclear power-generating facility, about eight miles from where I am now.
What are you tasked with?
Dounreay is in the process of being decommissioned, and the 2,400 engineering jobs with the plant are going to be lost by 2020. The area’s entire economy is based on output from the plant. There’s a real fear that when these jobs leave town, the economies and communities are going to fall apart, and that the young people here will have to go to London and Glasgow. I’m here to help create a plan for what can replace that and keep the people here.
What is the plan?
The sea just north of here, the Pentland Firth, has the third-strongest tidal flow in all of Europe. There is an enormous potential to generate energy from the tidal flow and also from wind, as it is very windy here. There’s a big movement in Scotland for green energy, and the area could be turned into a research and development center. The power can also be sold or used here to attract high-energy users who can get cheap power here and have lots of land, such as data centers and smelting plants that make copper and aluminum.
How does our economy compare with this one?
Our economy is very different and is much more developed, but there is a high proportion of skilled workers in this area too.
