Meeting of the Parliament 10 February 2026 [Draft]
I thank my friend and colleague Finlay Carson for bringing the debate to the chamber. It is a very good debate and could easily have been taken, at any time, as a main debate in the chamber.
Last week, members may have heard my colleague Douglas Lumsden ask the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy about the decision of the energy consents unit to move from receiving public representation by email to receiving it through an online portal. In response, she talked about regulation on energy transition being reserved to the United Kingdom Government and the need for developers to engage with communities. That was all very interesting but was not even close to answering the question. It was a bit like asking somebody the time and getting the reply, “Norway”.
To me, that sums up everything that has gone wrong with how we seek to maximise the benefits of Scotland’s renewable energy potential. Far too often, it has become a debate in which those who have competing viewpoints talk past, not to, each other. On one side, we have those who are determined to achieve clean power by 2030 and net zero by 2045 whatever the cost. On the other, we have campaigners who believe that the agenda will do so much damage to their communities that the proposed developments are an existential threat to rural Scotland. That is not where the debate on renewable energy should have ended up, because, fundamentally, most people are somewhere in the middle.
Renewable energy is the future. Oil and gas are a valuable national resource, and we should make the most of them.
However, in a world where fossil fuels are finite, their prices are increasingly volatile and energy security is a growing concern, we must be prepared for what comes after them. Scotland is in the fortunate position of being well placed to capitalise on the shift to renewables. Our engineering talent has only grown thanks to oil and gas, and now we have the opportunity to apply that talent to offshore renewables on our coasts and, I hope, around the world.
I cannot stress enough how big an opportunity renewable energy can be for Scotland if we get it right. Today, we are not getting it right. Instead, there is a piecemeal approach to the development of renewable generation, which, in no small part, is being driven by the lack of a clear plan for our future energy needs and has left more and more communities finding themselves facing an ever-growing number of renewable developments.
Although the developments are often relatively small, the cumulative impact of a few small turbines here, a few bigger ones there and a solar farm somewhere else ends up with residents in some part of the country feeling surrounded and overwhelmed, with their views treated as an afterthought.
The voices of communities should be heard in the process—they should feel that their opinions matter and that they have been thought about seriously before a planning decision is taken. Right now, all too often, that is not the case. Without that confidence in the process, every time that a decision is taken that does not acknowledge community concerns or the Scottish Government overrules a local refusal, as my colleague Finlay Carson said, the public’s trust erodes a little more. That does not help anyone, and it means that the planning process for every renewable project on important modernisations and upgrades to our electricity grid ends up becoming far more contentious than it should be. That means economic opportunities lost, infrastructure holding back growth, jobs going overseas and energy costs remaining tied to a volatile fossil fuel market for even longer.
Scotland needs renewables in the right place. In saying that, I know that there will be those who believe that the right place is somewhere else, but, as with any issue with competing points of view, that is where compromise and pragmatism are supposed to enter the equation. It should be where a proper and effective community benefits system offers real and lasting gain to communities, but that system is not ready. It should be where a smooth and transparent planning process offers developers and the public confidence that their respective views are recognised before offering a considered decision, but instead we have a black hole: the energy consents unit. It should be where a majority of people who do not mind renewable energy, who recognise the need to strengthen our grid for energy security and economic growth and who want to see that delivered with the minimum disruption to their lives are comfortable that that is what they will get.
Scotland should be all those things, but right now it is none of them, which is of no help to anyone. It seems to me that the situation that we find ourselves in today is a consequence of declaring our destination and arrival time without taking the time to draw the map first. Yes, we need to know where we are going, but, before charging off, we should have spent more time planning our route. However, as we did not, everyone—developers, energy companies, network operators, Governments, politicians and communities—is scrambling to find the right direction. We need to get it right, because if we waste this opportunity, we will never get it back.