Chamber and committees

So no real issues have come from the sea trials yet.

Nothing came up in the sea trials that will be looked at in the dry dock period.

When you build a vessel, how long are the warranties that manufacturers give you for engines and things? Are they for three years or five years? How does it work?

Right, but without the capital investment, that will be harder for the Government.

The First Minister makes one trip up to Aberdeen and then masquerades as the saviour of the oil and gas industry. He must think that the people of the north-east are buttoned up the back. He is against Cambo and Rosebank, and his Government still has a presumption against any new oil and gas licences. Will the First Minister tell members why he is in favour of importing more oil and gas and stopping new investment, which, as he knows, means throwing away thousands of livelihoods on the scrap heap?

I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement and welcome her to her new role. I acknowledge the significant contribution that the Grangemouth refinery makes to Scotland’s economy. On my visit to Grangemouth earlier this month, I met some of the workforce, and I know how much they care about the future of the terminal.

The news that shocked most people in November was no surprise to the Scottish Government. From a freedom of information request response, we have seen that the disgraced former Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport, Michael Matheson, met Petroineos in February 2022. In his letter from April 2022, we see that options were being evaluated and that the Government committed to a just transition for Grangemouth workers. It is clear that it knew what was coming. What preparation work to protect the workforce was carried out between April 2022 and the making of the Petroineos announcement? Why are options not further advanced, considering that the Government has had two years to prepare?

Unite the union’s survey of the workforce found that 88 per cent of respondents said that politicians were not doing enough to protect and support jobs at Grangemouth. They have been let down by the Scottish Government, have they not, cabinet secretary?

To ask the First Minister whether the Scottish Government still has a policy of a presumption against any new oil and gas licences. (S6F-02845)

Absolutely, but the minister misses the point—the energy is produced near where it is needed, which means that there is less distribution, and fewer pylons are needed, across the country.

The impact of pylons on our scenery in Scotland should not be underestimated, and communities are rightly concerned about their impact on tourism and, therefore, on economic development, as well as about the disruption to ecosystems during their construction.

Finally, I will address the economic case for nuclear energy in Scotland. Wind energy has many hidden costs, such as the cost of the transportation of energy and decommissioning costs for turbines. Those costs are included up front in the construction of nuclear power stations. Nuclear does not have to be the most expensive option when it is done properly and at scale.

In Scotland, the nuclear sector provides 3,664 jobs and £400 million in gross value added, and—significantly—almost 25 per cent of the sector’s direct employment is in the most deprived 10 per cent of local authorities. Nuclear has a key role to play in Scotland’s energy future. To ignore it and use false arguments against it is anti-scientific. The Government, which apparently has superior green credentials, is badly letting down the people of Scotland by not investing in a vital technology that could provide clean, green and sustainable energy for years to come. The position that the Government has taken is badly letting down our communities. It is anti-science, based on false claims, founded on fear and completely nonsensical. It lets down our energy industry and our communities, and it badly affects our standing with our neighbours.

I call on the Government to join countries such as the USA, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Ukraine, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and many others in welcoming nuclear as part of the energy mix and as an essential piece of the jigsaw in reaching net zero.

Does Fergus Ewing think that the Government’s partners, the Green Party, would support him in advocating new gas turbine production?

With regard to energy security, it is much better that the provision be built in this country. Yes, the costs for Hinkley Point have increased, but so has the cost of all our energy, including wind—the costs have shifted considerably in the contracts for difference allocation round 6 process.

In the short time that I have left, I will address some of those points further and set out the case for nuclear in relation to energy security, green credentials and economic viability. The war in Ukraine has revealed an overreliance on Russian oil and gas in many European states. Countries without a base load of nuclear power, such as Germany, have found themselves in economic hardship as a result of the fact that they do not produce enough power domestically, and they have even turned to coal. We must ensure that we, in Scotland, do not fall into the same trap and that we provide energy domestically rather than importing it from other countries.

Although nobody could deny that we have good wind generation in Scotland, it is weather dependent and does not provide the base load that is required for our communities day to day. At present, onshore wind provides 10.8 per cent of our UK energy mix, whereas nuclear provides 14.7 per cent. Wind is unreliable and provision depends on the ability to transport the energy from the turbines to where it is needed. In order to ensure grid stability and security, we require a form of energy that can supply a reliable base load 24/7, which nuclear does. It complements renewable generation, but it is required to supply that base load in the system.

By utilising nuclear energy, we were able to cut gas imports by 9 billion cubic metres in 2022, thereby reducing our exposure to international gas markets. Nuclear makes sense for energy security and is the only answer to ensuring that we can meet our base-load requirements in a non-carbon way. Nuclear is a green form of energy. According to the UN, it has the lowest life cycle of carbon intensity, the lowest land use and impact on ecosystems, and the lowest mineral and metal use. In addition, it is the only form of energy that is required to track, manage and make safe its own waste, and it does so very successfully and safely. As I should have mentioned, the price of that is built into the initial cost.

Nuclear energy is heavily regulated, has extremely high safety standards and is well respected in the energy sector. To go against that is simply hyperbole, made up by the Green wine-bar elites who prefer to use pseudoscience, rather than the real science, to back up their claims.

Torness nuclear power station has the capacity to power 2.2 million homes from one tenth of a square mile of land; that is rather different from the capacity of our onshore and offshore wind farms. Soon, however, Torness, like Hunterston before it, will be turned off, and with it will go the future of many of our young workers, who have not had the opportunity to work in the nuclear industry—unless, of course, they up sticks and move down south, where the Government does not have a blinkered view of the world.

That brings me to something that I remember from the nuclear industry reception that my colleague Liam Kerr hosted a couple of months back. A young apprentice—I cannot remember his name—gave an inspirational speech on his career with EDF, but he was looking to move away from Scotland to continue his career. The highly skilled and bright workforce of the future is being lost to Scotland.

Nuclear energy is produced where it is needed, rather than in our precious rural countryside. On Friday, I will attend a meeting of a local community council that is very worried about the impact on the local community of the pylons and substations that are built to transport the energy from wind farms to where it is needed in the central belt.