Meeting of the Parliament 15 March 2016
I thank the minister for the advance copy of his statement, although his text was rather long on criticism of others and remarkably short on concrete proposals about Scottish Government policy.
The minister’s criticism of the UK Government’s policy sits rather at odds with comments that I read in The Herald just two weeks ago from Keith Anderson, who is chief corporate officer at Scottish Power and whom I am sure the minister knows well. He announced plans for his company to invest £6.3 billion in renewable energy over the next five years,
“reflecting the ... company’s confidence in the UK market.”
Mr Anderson went on to praise the UK Government
“for providing the stable regulatory environment needed to encourage firms to invest in onshore windfarms”,
such as the Beatrice project to which the minister referred.
In an effort to get some specifics, I ask the minister two questions. First, now that energy efficiency is a national infrastructure priority, how much of the Scottish Government’s capital budget will be allocated to it in future years? Secondly, is not it time that the minister finally got off the fence on fracking? He talks a lot about scientific evidence. The Scottish Government’s own expert scientific panel concluded as long ago as July 2014 that fracking could be conducted safely in Scotland if properly controlled and regulated. Why is the Scottish Government not listening to its own scientists?