Meeting of the Parliament 20 April 2023
I am grateful for the intervention. I very much look forward to working with Gillian Martin, whom I have previously worked with productively. I genuinely look forward to that engagement.
The Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee has been looking into exactly that issue—how we generate our power, how we get it to market and what the grid will look like. That is on-going work that we are doing very productively in the committee, which I have no doubt that the minister will be interested in, as it is on exactly that point.
However, the problem is that even against all the facts that we have given, and even against the minister’s intervention about how we get the power generated, the draft energy strategy states:
“In order to support the fastest possible and most effective just transition, there should be a presumption against new exploration for oil and gas.”
It goes on to say:
“We do not support the building of new nuclear power plants”.
To fail to set out how baseload will be replaced; to fail to set out how jobs will be transitioned and to what; and to fail to state what will replace a zero-emission source such as nuclear, when the answer will likely have to be imported fossil fuels, is negligence on an industrial scale. It completely ignores that the best way to a just transition is to work with our successful North Sea businesses, not against them.
The energy strategy ignores that BP is providing £18 billion to invest in projects such as wind, electric vehicle charging and hydrogen; Shell is providing up to £25 billion for low and zero-carbon projects and its girls in energy scheme; Technip is investing in an independent company generating marine power; and Equinor is not only producing oil and gas but powering UK homes with wind and helping to build a hydrogen economy. We cannot achieve a just transition without the North Sea, so shutting it down to appease a cabal of ideologically driven Green Party MSPs is as short-sighted as it is ignorant.
What needs to happen was set out by Lord Deben. He said:
“There needs to be a very clear programme ... step by step ... how Scotland is going to achieve the targets that it has put forward”.—[Official Report, Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee, 20 December 2022; c 10.]
In my view, that means an assessment of what might be restricting entrepreneurialism in Scotland and whether, for example, having a regime of higher taxes than elsewhere in the UK is restricting talent. It means reviewing whether Skills Development Scotland and the enterprise agencies are doing their jobs properly and have sufficient resources to do what we ask them to do. It means the creation of a genuine energy strategy that asks: what will demand be, and how much energy do we need to generate to service it? From there, we can define the totality of the technologies that will be required to satisfy that demand. An industry is not created on a single project; businesses and investors need a pipeline.
From there, we can answer precisely what professions and skills we will need to satisfy those projects. That will allow us to answer questions about where we intend to train those people and, thus, what courses we need the colleges and universities to run. That will ensure that those colleges can be properly funded and that places in them can be created, instead of having a situation in which colleges have had to cut over 151,000 places since the SNP Government began in 2007. That will allow us to talk meaningfully about funding those places and, given the results of the energy sector workers survey, to perhaps provide bespoke support for transferring oil and gas workers.
Having worked out what we need and who we need to do it, the Government strategy can assess and provide for a supply chain. It can begin by asking: what do we have in Scotland, what can be repurposed or restarted, what materials do we need and where can we source them? For instance, can we source the rare metals for electrical vehicle batteries from companies such as Aberdeen Minerals, instead of outsourcing our responsibilities to areas of the world and regimes with much less attractive practices? At the moment, our supply chain is not being considered in the round, nor is it being backed. The obvious example is the sourcing of two ferries from a company in Turkey, which, I discovered through a portfolio question, has contracted one—I repeat, one—Scottish company to supply it out of its 58 suppliers.
Where all that gets us to is that this Government must stop patting itself on the back for its magical thinking, stop offshoring our responsibilities, stop denigrating our world-leading North Sea energy industry and start taking a science and evidence-based approach to ensuring a just transition. It must also become much better at communicating that these are the high-value, green jobs of the future, as well as at articulating the costs to the consumer of failing to get to net zero. In short, that is what the amendment in my name calls for, and that is why I have pleasure in moving it.
I move amendment S6M-08626.2, to insert at end:
“; recommends that a science and evidence-based approach be taken to deliver on national net zero targets and ensure a just transition; emphasises the need for Scotland to act as a responsible global partner by contributing to global efforts to support mitigation, adaption, and green technology projects, and not offsetting carbon emissions to other nations; asserts that collaboration with the UK Government and other devolved nations is essential to delivering a just transition; argues that the draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan lets down the people of Scotland and fails to provide a fair and just pathway to maximise the opportunities of that transition; notes that greater efforts are required to improve circularity within the Scottish economy, and believes that a workable Deposit Return Scheme, which addresses the current flaws, must be delivered.”
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