Chamber and committees

I welcome the cabinet secretary’s answer and the additional support that has gone to island festivals.

Festivals on our islands, such as the Orkney Folk Festival, contribute hugely to island life and our national cultural offering. Although festivals in our cities and the central belt can grow due to the ability to add more venues and the availability of accommodation provision and transport links, our island festivals do not have the same opportunity to develop. They face constraints and are victims of their own success, in that they cannot increase their income substantially, yet have increasing costs.

Will the cabinet secretary commit to considering, alongside Creative Scotland and EventScotland, how we can deliver a pilot island festival fund to provide stability to those vital cultural events in unique circumstances?

To ask the Scottish Government what support it will provide to festivals in island communities to ensure that they are sustainable. (S7O-00123)

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, as a member of Orkney Islands Council.

Scottish Greens do not oppose the review, but it is hard to have confidence when many recommendations of the decade-old Barclay review were never acted on. I welcome the Deputy First Minister’s commitment to working with COSLA and local boards to improve the billing system and ensure greater consistency for businesses. That is particularly important for smaller valuation offices, such as that of Orkney and Shetland, which is one of Scotland’s smallest, but deals with a complex and large workload in proportion to its staffing capacity and funding.

Looking more broadly, does the Deputy First Minister accept that the non-domestic rates system is intended to be a local tax? The review should therefore look at how councils can be given real discretion over the operation of the system in their area, in line with the Government’s community wealth-building agenda.

Yes, I quite agree, and the broader point that Liam McArthur makes around community capacity and resourcing is crucial. When communities enter into such engagements with developers, they often face quite technical, legalistic and financial discussions, for which many of them are, understandably, not prepared. Historically, we have seen a postcode lottery, with communities that have the existing capacities and volunteers—often, those who are retired and have the time to take on the substantial roles involved—able to excel while others get left behind. We must do a piece of work to broaden that out, and I hope that the Government would welcome that.

There are, however, significant barriers to repowering as things stand. NPF4 as it stands is inadequate; we need additional guidance that unlocks repowering and provides clarity and certainty to developers and community groups alike. Our strategic spatial energy plan needs to reflect our repowering potential and understand the opportunity that lies ahead of us, and we must update our onshore wind policy statement with a strategic focus on repowering so that we can deliver on that potential.

As we look ahead to the next five—and the next 25—years for our economy, let us make the right choices about growth and where our priorities lie. The Parliament has the chance to create generational change and transform the relationship between energy, our economy and our communities, and I urge the cabinet secretary to work with the Scottish Greens in doing so.

17:28

I begin by declaring an interest as a member of Orkney Islands Council and welcoming the cabinet secretary to his post.

As has been covered by my colleague Patrick Harvie, all too often when we talk about growth in the economy, we are not precise enough. Not all economic growth is equal and not all investment delivers positive outcomes. Too often, economic success is simply seen as a volume of investment; Willie Rennie spoke about our obsession with statistics. Important questions need to be asked about our economy. Who owns it? Who benefits from it? Who controls where the profits are going? Karen Adam reflected very aptly on the need for inclusive growth in the right places and for the right reason. That is essential to building a fairer and more prosperous country and taking communities along with us.

Strong track records of enterprise and innovation already exist in communities across Scotland. That is not the same as unchecked foreign direct investment or multinational ownership of our economy and our assets. Does our future lie in an economy of extraction, or should it be one that is built on community wealth creation and resilience building? Community organisations across the country already own businesses, land, energy production, housing and harbours—the list goes on. Community groups are already creating jobs, providing services, enhancing resilience and stimulating economic activity, often where it is hardest for Government to do so. They do so more efficiently, with greater local benefit and at remarkable value to the public purse. They achieve that despite facing barriers to financing, ownership and decision-making power.

The challenge is not a lack of economic opportunity or potential—I agree with the cabinet secretary on that. However, one big challenge that we face is too much leakage outwith our economy. The Centre for Local Economies Scotland report entitled “Blown away: following the money in Scotlandʼs onshore wind sector” shows the extent of the situation. It shows the extent of profit generation in our rural and island communities versus how much they are benefiting, and that inequity is not sustainable. It shows that, all the while, hundreds of millions of pounds are flowing into offshore tax havens.

When it comes to profit that is being generated already—which, according to the Government’s own best-practice principles, communities are entitled to a share of—the figures are also stark. Government guidance suggests that community benefit payments should be around £5,000 per installed megawatt, index linked, yet the report found that, across 261 operational wind farms, actual payments averaged just £3,167 per megawatt. By contrast, community-owned wind farms delivered the equivalent of more than £260,000 per megawatt—that is nearly 83 times more value flowing back into communities and local economies, and back into projects by the community for the community, be it in housing, job creation, health and wellbeing initiatives or transport. All those things are saving the Government money in delivering services on its behalf. That is the difference that ownership of our economy makes.

I agree that there is a balance to be struck, and we have to be pragmatic about what we are able to deliver and work in partnership. However, we are nowhere near that balancing point yet, and the Government must recognise that, in laying out its vision for our economy, we have an excellent opportunity to find that balance and work in partnership on the issue of repowering.

Scotland’s first generation of wind farms are approaching the end of their operational life, yet less than 1 per cent of Scotland’s existing onshore wind capacity is community owned. We have an opportunity not simply to replace ageing turbines, but to rethink ownership and create generational economic impact and structural change in our economy. We can ensure that the next generation of energy infrastructure delivers benefits for our local and national economies. The recent report by Equitable Energy Research CIC shows in detail the scale of opportunity. The case for getting behind this as an economic opportunity is clear: the sites have roads, grid connections, planning histories and proven resource and capacity factors, and repowering those sites, and the economic gains that can be made from them, can be done more quickly and efficiently.

Likewise, the increase in generation that is possible with repowering already exists, with modern technology and turbine technology moving on. This year, we will see the first opportunities to repower inclusively and strategically on Forestry and Land Scotland sites. The Government must get behind that and ensure that those first-generation sites are delivered effectively, with long-term mass repowering options available to us.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I congratulate you and the minister on your appointments, and I look forward to our working together.

I am unashamedly a product of our renewable energy story in Scotland—specifically at home, in Orkney. It is what led me to this Parliament and what drives me to make change for my community and region, the Highlands and Islands. I am pleased to make my first speech on a topic so close to my heart.

All too often, when we talk about our national transition to renewable energy, we focus purely on jobs and the economic impact. We forget that this is not only the economic opportunity of our time but our chance to build thriving, sustainable communities in areas that desperately need investment. Those communities are located right across Scotland, but particularly in the Highlands and Islands. Orkney has been a trailblazer in community-owned energy for decades, stretching back to the Westray Development Trust well over 20 years ago. However, the outlook for community energy in Scotland is challenging. In the context of successive UK Governments that have failed to plan for our future energy system and seem perpetually stuck in reforming our grid system to no conclusion, the challenge is undoubtable. However, the Scottish Government, too, must be serious about delivering on its existing commitments. We need a credible road map to significant expansion of renewable energy, owned by Scotland’s communities.

Equally, we need to be honest about what we have achieved towards that goal so far. For years, the Scottish Government’s target of 2GW by 2030 has conflated community-owned energy and locally owned energy, the latter of which includes energy that is owned by private businesses and large estates. Together, those account for an encouraging 1.15GW, but only 113MW of that is truly community-owned energy. That rate of progress is too slow. We already have the power to make progress faster by prioritising public land for community developments and by getting ahead of the first generation of mass, significant repowering of private onshore wind, which is already starting.

Herein lie opportunities for the Scottish Government to work with us to make the progress that we can and that we should begin. I have seen at first hand the positive impact that our development of renewable energy is having on the communities that are driving it forward—nowhere more so than in marine energy in Orkney. I have been incredibly fortunate in my life so far to benefit not only from the knowledge of the rich economy in renewables and decarbonisation that we have built in Orkney, but also from the people it has brought into my life—the friends and mentors who now call Orkney home and who have helped to create an international, outward-looking community.

Our island communities, even more acutely than the rest of Scotland, face enormous demographic and population challenges. To remain the viable, thriving and culturally rich places that they are, we must recognise them in this Parliament as drivers of our energy transition. That is why I am proud to have stood for election on a manifesto that is ambitious for the renewable energy sector and our communities.

We must commit to leading the world in areas such as tidal stream energy and floating offshore wind testing. That same national opportunity now sits in front of us with deep-water floating wind test facilities in Orkney, the commercialisation and deployment of tidal stream and further developing our supply chain, across the country—300MW of tidal stream project capacity await us in Orkney and the Pentland Firth alone, and it is built on a 50 per cent Scottish supply chain. That is a clear national success story that this Government needs to get behind and work with us to deliver. It is time for us to deliver a sectoral policy plan for tidal energy.

The role of communities such as Orkney in the transition to renewable energy tells the story of modern Scotland. It points to where we need to go. Yes, our transition to renewable energy is a challenge, but it is also undoubtedly our greatest opportunity. We must unashamedly pursue it, and we must do so together. We can also take action on what we can do now, and we must begin doing that.

It is on members of the Parliament to grasp the opportunity that is in front of us, and I am glad that the minister is keen for us to work together.

I, Kristopher Leask, do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm, that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors, according to law.