Enterprise and Culture Committee, 24 Jan 2006
Meeting date: Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Official Report
267KB pdf
Subordinate Legislation
Fossil Fuel Levy (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2005 (SSI 2005/641)
Welcome to the second meeting of the Enterprise and Culture Committee in 2006. I have received apologies from Jamie Stone. I ask everybody to switch off their mobile phones.
Agenda item 1 is subordinate legislation. James Thomson from the Scottish Executive is with us to discuss a negative instrument. He is a renewable energy policy officer.
James Thomson (Scottish Executive Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning Department):
That is correct.
Will you take two minutes to give us the gist of the regulations?
The regulations are part of the overall changes that we are making to the administration of Scottish renewable obligation contracts. The committee may know that SRO contracts were a forerunner of the renewables obligation.
The overall changes that we are seeking to implement will allow the renewables output from SRO contracts to be sold to a neutral third party. Currently, the output is allowed to be sold only to Scottish Power and Scottish and Southern Energy. The regulations will allow the nominated person—the neutral third party—to administer fossil fuel levy payments in the same way that Scottish Power and Scottish and Southern Energy currently do.
Thank you very much.
I should draw to members' attention the paper that has been circulated. The Subordinate Legislation Committee considered the regulations on 20 December 2005 and agreed that no points arose on them. Does any member have any questions to ask or comments to make?
No.
The regulations are subject to the negative resolution procedure, so we do not need to vote on them. We simply thank James Thomson very much. We will report back to the Parliament.