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Meeting of the Parliament 09 January 2013

09 Jan 2013 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Oil and Gas Sector

Harvie, Patrick Green Glasgow Watch on SPTV

I like to begin with a note of consensus when I can—Alex Johnstone looks sceptical already.

I agree strongly with all three members who have spoken on the point about the safety issues around the industry—we can all agree on the importance of safety as regards people and the marine environment. Despite the fact that we will disagree on the future that we want to see for the industry, I hope that everybody in the chamber would come together in paying tribute to those who work hard to protect the safety of people and of the environment.

I want to give credit where it is due to the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government has a clear focus on its renewable energy targets and I have consistently welcomed that. For the first time last year, we saw a £1 billion investment in renewables in Scotland. There is high confidence that the 100 per cent target for 2020 can be achieved and that there will be big increases for the marine sector after that so that we can export efficiently to help to decarbonise Europe’s electricity production.

However, that is not the whole story in terms of decarbonising our energy system. Renewables cut carbon emissions only if they replace fossil fuels. We need to reduce demand. Not only investment in renewables is necessary if we are serious about climate change, but disinvestment in the high-carbon industries and sadly the current minister seems not to agree with that. Indeed, since he took on the job I have only ever really noticed the fire come into his eyes when he talks about another 40 years of oil and gas extraction in Scotland.

Under the Scottish National Party Government, there has been an increase in opencast coal extraction, a relaxed attitude to unconventional gas, coal-bed methane and fracking potentially, support for deepwater drilling and now an oil and gas strategy that is focused on squeezing out every last drop from the North Sea.

I refer members to the document that I mention in my amendment, the International Energy Agency’s “World Energy Outlook 2012”, which concludes that

“no more than one third of proven fossil fuel reserves can be consumed”

prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the goal of constraining climate change to 2°C unless carbon capture and storage technology is widely deployed. As I mentioned earlier, CCS cannot be deployed in relation to uses of fossil fuel for transport and heating, for example, which is where most of our oil goes.

The International Energy Agency is generally a conservative body—it is not where we would look to if we wanted to find an overly alarmist approach. The next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report seems likely to focus minds on just how much tougher the 2°C target is than was previously thought.

There are three ways of resolving that contradiction. One is to say that domestic production is necessary in order to reduce our reliance on imports. Pretty much every country that has any fossil fuel to extract domestically will use that argument—indeed, they are using it—with the result that nobody budges and we carry on putting more fossil carbon into the global economy and therefore into the atmosphere.

The second option in response to the contradiction is to say that we need to continue our reliance on fossil fuels for a while to bridge the gap before we transition properly to a genuinely low-carbon economy. That argument boils down to saying, “Lord, make me chaste—but not yet.” In fact, it does worse. Increased production will help tendencies to keep prices down, so it will delay the transition towards the low-carbon economy that everybody says that they want.

The third argument is the one that the minister used. CCS is talked about as the essential technology to take fossil carbon back into the ground after we have consumed fossil fuels. As I have made clear, we cannot apply that approach in relation to the fossil carbon that comes from the oil industry. That is simply not an option.

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Meeting of the Parliament 09 January 2013

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