ScottishPower said it will invest £4 million every day until 2020 as it celebrated the official opening of its new headquarters in St Vincent Street, Glasgow with the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on Tuesday.
The company announced that daily investment has risen from £3.3 million per day during 2013-15 up to £4 million per day during its 2016-2020 investment period.
“The investment programme, which will be led by expert teams based in the new HQ, will total around £8 billion until 2020 and will be focused on ‘future-proofing’ the UK’s electricity system,” said ScottishPower.
The company’s new HQ has brought together 1,650 employees previously spread across a number of separate sites in Scotland, enabling better collaboration on future technologies.
ScottishPower is part of the Bilbao-based Iberdrola Group.
The St Vincent Street building, which is the largest single-use office to be built in Glasgow for 25 years, will also act as the company’s global base for offshore wind.
Glasgow-based experts will work to deliver major projects not only in the UK, but also in the United States, Germany and France.
Ignacio Galan, chairman of ScottishPower, said: “Glasgow has a long and successful history in innovation and industry and our new headquarters will ensure that the city continues to be a centre of engineering excellence and invention.
“For the first time, we have our expert teams under one roof with a shared purpose to harness low carbon power and deliver digital transformation.
“Along with our skilled workforce, our new HQ will also be an exciting hub delivering our planned £8 billion investment in new projects across the UK and beyond.
“Together we will provide the systems that power the future.
“Glasgow has been our home for over 60 years, and we are very pleased to be committing our long term future to the city.
“It has a proud engineering heritage, and just as the city was pivotal to the industrial revolution, we hope that we can help it to play an important role in the digital revolution.”
Sturgeon said: “ScottishPower’s new UK headquarters demonstrates this global company’s commitment to Scotland.
“It’s a fitting new home for a company that has been a huge asset for Glasgow, and the wider country, for many years.
“This building houses more than 1,600 employees, and ScottishPower has committed to spending £4 million every day to support innovation and the transition to clean energy.
“This level of ambition is an exemplar to our world-leading energy sector.
“I wish ScottishPower every success in the future as they help us realise our long-term plan for Scotland’s energy future, which includes a proposal to meet half of our energy needs from renewables by 2030.”