According to the  authoritative Economist  it is Strathclyde University’s electrical-engineering department that is probably Britain’s best. Four utilities fund research in its Institute for Energy and Environment which, with 210 staff, claims to be Europe’s largest such outfit, equipped to take new technology from design to operation.

Pre-eminence is attributed, in large part, to the work of Jim McDonald, formerly department’s head, now University vice-chancellor.

He spent eight years in the power industry before entering academia and is adamant that universities should be as concerned with practical as theoretical innovation, having championed collaboration with such manufacturers as Rolls-Royce.

He wants Strathclyde to be the world’s top energy-research hub and is set to announce £112m in extra research funding, some 40% of it from industry. Glasgow he is quoted “has always been an engineering city and it will be even more so in the future.”

In 2009 Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), a utility, founded a renewable-energy research centre in the city; last year Mitsubishi, the  giant Japanese firm rapidly building a big renewable-energy manufacturing capacity in Europe, decided to join SSE in the centre funding, which will employ 400 people.

Iberdrola, Spanish owner of ScottishPower (another utility), and one of the world’s biggest generators of renewable energy, placed its global offshore-wind headquarters in Glasgow, while Gamesa, a Spanish turbine-maker, is to set up its own research facility there.