Hansard

I agree that oil and gas companies could do a lot more, even in terms of helping us to decommission and to get the most value from decommissioning. For example, infrared coding of oil and gas platforms to signify what alloys the platforms contain would allow us to decommission those facilities better.

There is also a lot more that companies could do to improve things in terms of design of facilities. We see that in the aerospace industry regularly, but there has, in the oil and gas sector, been overall reluctance to embrace resale of assets and even to keep paperwork so that turbines and generators can be sold on to other markets. There is a lot more that oil and gas companies, and the sector as a whole, can do.

The overall solution that answers Gillian Martin’s question and the one that I have posed in my remarks is to have a circular economy strategy. That option is the one that is best placed to capture as much value as possible from the estimated £50 billion that could be spent on North Sea oil and gas decommissioning by 2040. That represents an opportunity to create jobs in the north-east, and supply chain jobs throughout Scotland. We must look to reuse assets such as pipelines either within the industry itself or in other sectors such as construction, to which they are worth more than five times their scrap value.

Across all sectors, and according to Scottish Government reports, an ambitious circular economy programme could add more than 40,000 jobs to our economy, on top of the estimated 56,000 jobs that already exist. The jobs would have the potential to reduce unemployment in areas where jobs are most needed, and would have a high degree of durability, so that they would be likely to survive the hollowing out of the labour market.

The size of the prize is massive, which means that we must be ambitious. We have rightly set the bar high for the environmental side of our low-carbon transition; the same standard should apply to the economic aspect. That will require us to reassess how the Government leads on low-carbon policy. A good start would be to embed circular economy practice across all portfolio areas, and to make it a marker against which to judge future policy decisions.

Beyond that, we must see a deepening of the relationships between education, business and the third sector. The Scottish Conservatives have proposed the creation of new institutions including a design academy and an institute of reuse to help to co-ordinate such activities. That unified approach would allow us to identify better where to focus our efforts, which would enable a low-carbon economy that is driven by problem-led challenges that are relevant to Scotland.

For example, constraint payments are at a record high, but why pay energy providers to turn off production when we could use excess power to facilitate an electric arc furnace that recycles steel, while giving Scots jobs? That is an example of the joined-up thinking that produces better environmental outcomes, further reduces waste and generates additional economic activity.

Rural Scotland also stands to benefit greatly from that approach, and the Scottish Conservatives recently announced a package of measures to support food producers. We believe that we can offer those businesses the ability to recycle more and to extract more value from the waste that they produce, all while driving down costs and offering rural communities a bigger stake in our low-carbon economy. That would involve setting up a microplastic recycling facility and waste hubs, which would solve the problem of what farmers do with plastic waste, now that there is a ban on incinerating it. It would also help the environment as well as create jobs.

We have also proposed helping farmers and other food producers to set up on-site anaerobic digestion, including providing capital and technical support, which would allow production of energy and heat that would directly help them to lower their bills. Across Scotland, the proposal has the potential to generate an extra £27 million in value from energy generation. There is also the potential to work cross-sector by using excess heat to dry food waste in order to make it easier to transport for biorefining—an industry that could be worth £900 million by 2025.

If we want a truly just transformation, surely the way to go about that is to focus our efforts on the needs of Scottish families and businesses, and to encourage innovation and economic activity that use Scottish insight, Scottish workers and Scottish resources, in order to provide everyone with an opportunity to grow and prosper.

Of course, transforming our economy is not without risk, so we must be alert to the obstacles that we face when we ask individuals and businesses to invest in Scotland. The most obvious obstacle is our size: on many fronts Scotland simply cannot outspend larger competitors or field initiatives of the scale that they can field. One solution is to specialise by progressing a handful of strategies that best suit our needs, while we also benefit from large-scale projects that operate at UK level.

Having looked at the other amendments to the motion, we are interested to hear from Scottish Labour, but overall we are comfortable with the current situation and do not feel that there is a requirement for a statutory commission. In respect of the Green amendment, the end of our oil and gas sector should not happen just by any manner or means, so we are not at all comfortable with the proposition that is set out in the amendment.

We believe that innovation is what drives economies forward. Hand in hand with transitioning to a low-carbon economy, we should be building a culture that rewards those who are willing to experiment and to push the envelope of success. Success is what we need to ensure that the transition to a low-carbon economy is positive for every family, community and business.

I move S5M-15380.2, to insert at end:

", and believes that implementing a circular economy strategy for Scotland is an effective and sustainable way to bring about this transition."