SCOTTISH innovation and Scottish business crop up in the most unexpected places. One of these was the Building Bridges 2023 summit in Geneva, Switzerland, last month, an annual week of conferences and seminars on sustainable finance.
With the support of Space Scotland, Scottish Development International, the University of Edinburgh and the British Embassy in Berne, a group of Scottish start-ups and technology companies focused on satellite solutions – Earth Blox, Krucial, Terrabotics and Trade in Space – presented to an appreciative audience of Swiss and international sustainability experts, companies and investors, on the theme of “Space Data, Earth Observation and Environmental, Social and Governance”.
Some readers may remember the Scottish Government’s launch of the Scottish Space Strategy in October 2021, which looked to establish Scotland as a world leader in commercial space development, aiming to create, along with a string of satellite launch and data-processing facilities, some 20,000 jobs by 2030.
One important plank of the strategy was “developing a world-leading environmental strategy for Scotland’s space industry, from reducing emissions to supporting the use of satellite data for environmental monitoring” – and it looks like this part of the strategy is now bearing fruit.
Sustainable Space – A Roadmap for Scotland added a critical sustainability aspect to Scotland’s space strategy. Believed to be the first such initiative of its kind, and also supported by Space Scotland, it was originally backed by funding from Scottish Enterprise and launched in September last year at the Glasgow Science Centre.
Space Scotland states that Scotland is now Europe’s leading manufacturing location for small satellites and that the commercial space market contributes around £4 billion annually to the Scottish economy. The Swiss audience definitely seemed suitably impressed.
So what are the other factors beside the official support that have propelled Scotland upward in aerospace? And how does the resulting ecosystem look?
“One of the key elements of Scotland’s rich space industry is its ability to do it all – from building to launching to data analysis,” said Allan Cannon, CEO and co-founder at Krucial and one of the speakers at Building Bridges 2023. “Our upstream ecosystem is strong [those building hardware] as is the downstream element [the software and appliances that make satellite-related earth sciences so valuable].”
Governmental support of the space industry has been vital to its growth, according to Duncan Smith, a director at Space Scotland and founder of commercial space-focused strategic marketing agency AstroAgency: “The Scottish Government recognises the benefits a thriving space sector brings to the economy, environment and wider society, as well as the cross-sectoral opportunities.
“The UK Space Agency and organisations such as the Science and Technology Facilities Council, Innovate UK and of course the European Space Agency add additional layers of public-sector support for a young but burgeoning industry.”
Local factors play a large part in why Scotland has been able to establish such a position in space and satellite-related earth sciences, Cannon continued.
He said: “We have a highly educated workforce, with world-class institutions such as the University of Strathclyde right on our doorstep, while the expertise to have spilled out of the early days of space start-ups, including Clyde Space, has resulted in more and more innovative companies starting up in Scotland, resulting in a truly world-class space economy.”
THE introduction of strong sustainability elements into Scotland’s space strategy has positioned Scottish space businesses to take advantage of what turns out to be a highly important area of applications for space science.
“When it comes to gathering Earth intelligence from space, the applications are limited only by your imagination,” Smith said .
“We’re seeing Scottish satellite manufacturers such as Spire Space Services, AAC Clyde Space and Alba Orbital working with partners to detect and monitor wildfires, support disaster relief, detect illegal fishing and much more.
“We’re also tracking more than 30 Earth observations companies who harness the data from space to provide actionable insights that would be difficult or impossible to source without access to space.”
A key advantage of satellite sensing is that it enables tracking of environmental, and sometimes even social, impacts in real time, impartially and objectively, even if the area under surveillance is remote and difficult to monitor in any other way.
Compliance with new environmental regulations, or with voluntary agreements as part of deals or aid packages, is highly important for sustainability initiatives, and satellites are ideal tools for monitoring such compliance.
Smith said: “From the agriculture sector using satellite data to check the health of crops to the forestry industry turning to space for help classifying and even counting trees, more and more businesses are realising the benefits that can come from space, as are governments,.
“But the key is ensuring that terms like ‘space’ and ‘satellites’ don’t put off other sectors due to a perception of expense and complexity – it has actually never been cheaper or easier to put payloads into orbit.”
Scotland does appear to be growing just the kind of infrastructure that can boost entrepreneurship in space science, as in other areas.
“You only need to look at the clusters which have been built across the country – from space to life sciences to fintech – to see the development of innovation and cutting-edge technology in Scotland,” Cannon said.
“The establishment in Glasgow of Barclays Eagle Labs has been a significant boost, while our innovation centres, including Censis and the Sustainable Aquaculture Innovation Centre, offer valuable support to those looking to build businesses and take ideas to the next stage.”
This isn’t necessarily a story that’s appreciated in full, though, even in Scotland. Smith added: “What’s missing, I feel, is sharing the work with the wider public and highlighting the different sectors and environmental causes that can benefit from the intelligence coming from satellites, many of which are built in Scotland and, of course, could soon be launched from Scotland.
“As that full value chain capability moves closer, it’s important we continue placing sustainability at the heart of our offering.”
Paul StJohn Mackintosh is a journalist and writer resident in France
