Chamber and committees

To ask the Scottish Government what national assessment it has made of the climate impact associated with hyperscale AI green data centres. (S7O-00110)

I hear what the cabinet secretary says about her engagement with industry, but it is communities that are facing a deluge of applications for data centres. There are people here today from Fife and across Scotland who are raising their concerns. Answers are needed, cabinet secretary. Fife Council has now asked the Scottish Government for direction over the environmental assessment of the proposed data centre at Auchtertool in Fife.

Is it not the case that the Scottish Government has been totally caught out on this issue? Coming up with a definition of a green data centre next year will be far too late for decision makers such as Fife Council. Does the cabinet secretary agree that she needs to sit down with the planning minister, sort out the guidance and, in the meantime, put in place a moratorium on decision making?

You are in good company.

I congratulate Andrew on his appointment.

Good morning, and welcome to the first meeting in session 7 of the Rural Affairs Committee. We have received apologies from Emma Roddick.

Our first item of business this morning is a declaration of members’ interests. As this is the committee’s first meeting, I invite each member to declare any interests that are relevant to the remit of the committee. That applies regardless of whether such an interest is relevant to today’s business, and it is in addition to the ordinary requirement to declare interests that are relevant to specific items of business. A declaration can be brief, but it should be sufficiently informative for a listener to understand the nature of the interest. It is not enough to simply refer to the register of members’ interests.

I will start by declaring that I am an honorary associate member of the British Veterinary Association.

Agenda item 2 is the choosing of a deputy convener. On 4 June, the Parliament agreed to motion S7M-00269, which states that only members of the Scottish Liberal Democrats are eligible to be chosen as the deputy convener of the committee. On that basis, Andrew Baxter is the only member of the committee who is eligible for the position. I invite a member to nominate Andrew as deputy convener.

Agenda item 3 is a decision on taking agenda item 4, which is consideration of the committee’s work programme, in private. The committee is asked to take that item in private because it involves planning future business and discussing approaches and potential witnesses. Are we agreed to take item 4 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

We will now move into private. I thank the folks who joined us online today.

09:32

Meeting continued in private until 10:27.

No.

The first half of our journey to net zero in Scotland has brought big benefits, with a revolution in renewable energy that has stripped fossil fuels out of our electricity supply and brought a strong degree of energy security. However, there have also been challenges. Transition has often been unplanned, and economic and community benefits have not reached their full potential. The next half of the journey must be better and fairer: workers and communities must be taken on the journey, and we must protect people from cost of living shocks while delivering benefits for our health and our environment that make sense in their own right.

There has certainly been a right-wing media tirade against climate action, with 70 per cent of recent articles on climate framed negatively, but it would be wrong to assume that public opinion has turned against climate action. A study that was commissioned by the Institute for Public Policy Research a couple of months ago showed that 62 per cent of the UK public back strong climate action, and individual policies such as traffic reduction measures, frequent flyer taxes and low-carbon home heating remain popular. The same study showed that 54 per cent of people believe that the best way to secure energy security is to expand renewable energy, not to double down on oil and gas production.

Despite what some politicians might dream of, we cannot wind the clock back to the 1970s. The trajectory, with or without new fields such as Rosebank, is decline. Transition must accelerate to protect jobs from a cliff edge and to protect our energy security.

There is clearly a gulf between what politicians believe is public opinion and what it really is. I was slightly taken aback by Claire Baker’s comment at the beginning of her speech, when she seemed to make the point that the consensus among the public for climate action has gone away. I do not think that it has. It is political caution that will leave us more vulnerable to climate change.

Climate change is the biggest crisis—and the biggest opportunity—that we have now and in the future. To be honest, having listened to the previous speech, I do not want to get drawn into a scientifically illiterate debate about whether climate change is real. We had that debate 25 years ago. The question now is about how we move forward and how we act to protect the economy, people and the environment.