Chamber and committees

Yes, indeed. Up until recently, there has been a complete lack of consumer protection in heat networks, and that needs to be fixed. We have been learning lessons from countries such as Denmark on how to do heat networks well, and we need to continue to do so.

Some people have posited the issue of fairness purely in terms of the favourability of particular types of energy infrastructure. Do people want a pylon built? Do people want wind turbines? Do people want this infrastructure or that infrastructure? I would make the case that all energy infrastructure brings controversy with it. When I was first elected, Scotland was still burning coal to generate electricity, communities not so far away from where I live were blighted with open-cast coal extraction, and businesses had an abysmal track record in protecting communities from environmental harm, seeking constantly to expand that open-cast coal extraction.

With regard to the infrastructure, every solution—every choice that we might make about what energy system we should build—will bring controversy with it.

However, I am looking at the moment at recent polling by YouGov on public support for the UK getting more energy from different types of sources. The overwhelming support is for tidal, solar, offshore wind, hydroelectric, geothermal and onshore wind, and there is fairly strong support for biofuels. The public view was fairly mixed and balanced on nuclear, and the public view on fossil fuel was strongly opposed. I think that we need to recognise that aspect.

There is not time to address everything that I would like to have said. However, I will say that, notwithstanding some of the anti-net zero comments that we have heard today, which would have been more at home at a conference of the Heartland Institute or the Reform Party—perhaps one or two members have decided to jump ship early—there is a question around just transition. Just transition needs to be more than a phrase, and it will not be if we leave the political and economic power with the corporates, the billionaires and the shareholders and investors, who will only ever serve their own short-term interests. Governments need to make a just transition happen. That has not been happening so far.

Whether the issue is Grangemouth, the North Sea industries, or oil and gas companies slashing their already meagre renewables investment, or every household in the country worried about its energy bills and wanting to shift away from fossil fuels affordably, the market will not deliver—Government must.

Will the cabinet secretary give way on that point?

I join others in welcoming the consul general of Ukraine, and I recognise the impact of these discussions on Ukraine and on Ukrainians who are living in Scotland. The Scottish Greens stand fully in support of the political unity in defence of Ukraine’s sovereignty that the First Minister has spoken of and which I had hoped that all political parties would express in the chamber today, instead of making party-political points.

I recognise the dignity of President Zelenskyy and his courageous display of self-respect in the face of the astonishing mistreatment that he was subjected to on Friday. [Applause.] He told the truth and challenged Russian propaganda.

Scotland has strong solidarity with Ukraine and is outraged at those who would abandon it to an aggressor, but these events threaten all countries, including our own. Trump’s choice to realign the US with Russia and against not only Ukraine but democratic Europe is clear, and it is astonishing that some voices in the UK’s politics and media are pretending that the world has not changed fundamentally.

I want to ask the First Minister about a matter that is within his devolved responsibility. Following the US decision to cease cybersecurity operations against Russia, does he agree that he must ensure that data and systems relating to all functions of the Scottish Government and Scottish public services must be secured? Will he urgently commission a review to identify whether any current or potential US partner company should now be considered a security risk?

Will the minister take an intervention?

Will the minister give way?

There is a great deal to talk about, so I hope that the task of dismissing the argument for new nuclear will be the quick part of this speech.

The minister already mentioned costs. The massive up-front capital costs that have to be repaid over the operational lifetime mean that new nuclear will deliver energy at £109 per megawatt hour, compared with less than half of that—£44 for offshore wind, £41 for large-scale solar and just £38 for onshore wind.

On timescales, we know that emission cuts are needed quickly and that nuclear is slow to deliver. That goes for big projects such as Hinkley C, which was announced in 2010 and is unlikely to operate before the 2030s after a vast cost overrun. It is also true for the idea of small modular reactors, with which some nuclear lobbyists have a current love affair. Although designs and prototypes have been in development for decades, they are still not delivering on a commercial scale anywhere in the world.

If SMRs ever end up delivering on their long-promised advantages, those advantages will depend on deployment at scale, including through standardised design models and minimising on-site construction. That is not great for the jobs argument that some of the advocates rely on either.

As for the argument about base-load, if the task before us was simply to rebuild like for like a low-carbon version of the 20th century energy system, the concept of base-load cannot be avoided. However, we are seeing the emergence of a new energy system that is based on diverse, decentralised renewable generation, demand reduction, large-scale deployment of new forms of energy storage and lots of interconnection for highly efficient, long-distance electricity trading between markets, and smart technology to smooth the variability of demand and supply.

All of the range of technologies that I have just described are the reason why we are moving away from the world where centralised base-load generation is required and towards a more diverse, decentralised energy system. In short, the clean, secure and energy-efficient energy system that we need simply does not rely on nuclear.

Let us look at where Scotland’s advantages lie. We have a strong track record on renewables. Successive Governments have set targets that many so-called experts dismissed; they said that renewables would never generate that much. However, those targets were successfully exceeded. In some years, we are now generating more in renewable electricity than the electricity that we consume.

We have skills in oil and gas that can transfer to many new industries, including areas such as green hydrogen, if both Governments are proactive, because we know that the oil and gas companies will not be.

Scotland also has many areas where we need to catch up on lost ground. We waste too much energy and we still construct our buildings as though energy is cheap to use. There have been improvements in energy efficiency standards in new builds, but that must go further. We have to start treating investment in the energy efficiency of existing buildings as a national strategic infrastructure priority.

We rely too much on private ownership and not enough on public and community ownership. There is a strong case for an ambitious target for the amount of wholly community-owned renewable energy in Scotland and for priority access to land for community energy to make that target a reality. The Government must put in place support for community projects to access the capital that they need for repowering. Commercial repowering must also deliver community benefit, just as new-build commercial wind should.

That is in addition to the need to learn from the best of Denmark’s experience, which has been building heat networks for 50 years and doing it for public benefit rather than for private profit, which protects its energy consumers. With communities owning their own heat infrastructure and renewable generating capacity, that experience shows us that we do not need to replicate an energy system that extracts profit from people in fuel poverty.

I do not have time, I am afraid.

We have an energy system that is still regulated as though it is for the needs of the 20th century. Renewable electricity is the cheapest power to generate and should be the cheapest to consume, but the way that the UK regulates the energy market artificially increases its price to consumers and acts as a barrier to people shifting away from fossil fuels for heat and transport.

We also have a gap between the political desire to be seen as climate leaders and the political courage to act. Despite our strong track record on renewables, there has been little to no progress on other sectors such as land, buildings and transport, and there is now a series of delays to the energy strategy and just transition plan. I have seen suggestions that the legal rulings on the unlawful approval of Rosebank and Jackdaw have in some way led to those delays. That can be the case only if the Government proposes to express positive support for those unlawfully approved developments.

The heat in buildings bill would relate to one of the most obvious areas in which we do not just need to cut emissions but to deploy systems that can use renewable electricity to displace fossil fuels at scale and in a way that will cut people’s bills. That was accelerating in the first two years of the current parliamentary session, and the bill was on track to be introduced before the end of 2024. Now the bill is absent, with no explanation.

Renewables growth did not happen by magic. Scotland was successful because successive Governments gave clear and consistent signals to innovators, investors, the workforce and policy makers that Scotland was serious about renewables. That is the clarity that we need on the clean heat sector—for building owners, investors, installers and those who train them, and for the businesses that are innovating in new systems. The benefits are there for the taking in jobs, reduced bills, emissions cuts and energy security, but only if the Scottish Government ends the delay, commits to a truly ambitious agenda and puts the bill before the Parliament now.

I move amendment S6M-16657.1, to insert at end:

“; believes, however, that for the benefits of renewable energy to be maximised, further action is needed; further believes that both governments should place a higher priority on public and community ownership of renewable energy infrastructure; recognises the need for the UK Government to make changes to energy regulation and pricing to incentivise renewable generation, storage and grid infrastructure, and to make electrification of heat and transport more financially attractive, and further recognises the urgent need for the Scottish Government to end the delays to the Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan and the planned Heat in Buildings Bill, which must be introduced to the Parliament as soon as possible.”

We have heard some well-reasoned, thoughtful and well-informed speeches; we have heard some bluster as well. In particular, some of the SMR boosterism has been a little bit overblown and silly. In their speeches, some members were pretty much saying, “SMRs are just lovely. SMRs are modern. SMRs are just wonderful, and they’ll solve every problem.” I was pleased that Michael Matheson tried to burst that bubble. At one point, I almost thought that I was hearing Sir Humphrey Appleby telling his minister, “SMRs are quite simply the nuclear power station Harrods would sell you.” We should attach to some of those speeches the same kind of absurdity that we would to those performances.

SMRs have not been proven anywhere in the world. In fact, I draw members’ attention to the comments of the Environmental Audit Committee at the UK Parliament, which wrote last year to the outgoing UK Government expressing doubts on SMRs. When referring to whichever reactor wins the UK design competition, it said:

“It seems unlikely that the reactor will be contributing generating capacity to the grid until 2035, which is the date by when the Government expects the GB electricity grid to have been decarbonised.”

The new UK Government wants to decarbonise the grid by 2030. SMRs will play no role in doing that, even if somebody somewhere in the world cracks the many challenges in making them viable.

I want to talk a little bit about how this debate links to the previous statement on the geopolitical changes that we are seeing around the world. There is a profound link to energy policy, and there is a good reason why many of my colleagues in the European Green Party have used slogans such as “More wind, less war” and “Less power from gas, less power for Putin.”

The way in which we move away from fossil fuels, which have been used as a geopolitical weapon by global bullies for decades—even for generations—needs to be accelerated. Some people say that nuclear power can be part of the shift away from fossil fuels, but nuclear power is still based on and would still bake in the reliance on a fixed, finite commodity—high-grade uranium ore—and whoever ends up possessing that commodity. If the world was to commit to a transition away from fossil fuels that was fundamentally based on nuclear power, we would simply be redesigning that same dynamic but with a different commodity—not fossil fuels, but high-grade uranium ore—and future generations would come to curse our name for having made that mistake.

Various members have talked about fairness in that transition. I spoke in particular about fairness in terms of cost, contrasting the low, low cost of production of clean, green, renewable electricity with the high cost of consumption. That fundamental injustice needs to be changed. I wish to goodness that we could change that here in Scotland. In its review of pricing, the UK Government must be put under pressure to break the link between fossil fuel prices and electricity prices, so that people are given a real incentive for people to shift away from fossil fuels for their heat and their transport.

Has the minister seen the United Kingdom Climate Change Committee’s report “The Seventh Carbon Budget”, which was published a week or 10 days ago? It concludes very clearly that, although hydrogen will have many other uses in the energy system, it will have no role in domestic heating.